NEW YORK: Tests on a drug with the potential to stop Alzheimer’s in its tracks are being funded by raffles, pensioners’ donations and a sponsored walk – because the research team cannot find money for pre-clinical safety tests any other way.
The team of researchers led by Dr David Allsop at Lancaster University’s division of biomedicine and life sciences is running a crowdfunding campaign, Defying Dementia, to carry out the necessary preparatory testing on their drug in the belief they may be looking at a cure for the progressive brain disease. So far they have raised £52,000 towards their target of £165,000.
The global financial crisis has blocked access to credit and funding for basic and clinical research, leading some health researchers – particularly in the US – to turn to crowdfunding. American crowdfunding sites such as Experiment display an array of competing projects, from finding the cause of sarcomas in children and dogs (103% of the way to its target) to examining sweetener safety (3%).
Many crowdfunding websites are cautious about revealing exactly how much money has been raised for science, but SciFund Challenge has allowed nearly 200 researchers to raise an average of $2,000 (£1,272) for 159 different projects. In the UK, crowdfunding is common in the arts and community project fields, but not in basic medical research…