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Professor Jonathan Schott on UCL’s collaborative approach to tackling dementia

Jonathan Schott is a Professor of Neurology at UCL with particular expertise in dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and Chief Medical Officer for Alzheimer's Research UK.

Being able to identify Alzheimer’s disease from a blood test might sound like science fiction, but thanks to the Blood Biomarker Challenge funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society and players of the People’s Postcode Lottery it could be a reality in as little as five years.

At UCL Professor Jonathan Schott and Dr Ashvini Keshavan (both UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), are heading up the ‘ADAPT’ team investigating the most promising biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease, called p-tau217, part of the Blood Biomarker Challenge.  

Elevated levels of p-tau217 in the blood or cerebrospinal fluid indicate the presence of two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease – amyloid plaques and tangles containing tau within the brain

The ADAPT team will be carrying out a clinical trial in NHS memory clinics across the UK to see whether measuring p-tau217 in the blood increases the rate of diagnosis for Alzheimer’s disease both in people with early dementia, and those with mild, progressive problems with memory.

It is their hope that this research will establish this blood test as a routine means of helping diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, allowing early detection and intervention when new treatments become available. In this video, Professor Schott talks about the ADAPT study and how blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease may be just around the corner.

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As well as working on the Blood Biomarker Challenge, Professor Schott undertakes translational clinical research in ageing and the dementias with a particular interest in early and accurate diagnosis. Professor Schott is also Chief Investigator of Insight 46, a neuroscience study of the world’s oldest continuously running birth cohort - The Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, also known as the British 1946 Birth Cohort. Combining the detailed health and life circumstances, ,cognitive and physical measurements that have been collected on this group since their childhood with state-of-the-art brain scanning and other assessments allows Professor Schott and his colleagues a unique opportunity to investigate the social,  biological and genetic factors that influence brain ageing and the development of dementia.

In this video, Professor Schott talks about what motivates him to research Alzheimer’s disease and how collaboration is key when it comes to dementia research.

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Biography

Professor Jonathan Schott graduated from St Mary's Hospital Medical School (First Class BSc 1993, MB BS with Honours in 1996), and studied Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, and the Royal Free Hospital. He completed his MD at the Dementia Research Centre using MRI to track progression in Alzheimer's disease in 2004. He was appointed HEFCE Clinical Senior Lecturer at UCL & Honorary Consultant at UCLH in 2009; Reader in Clinical Neurology in 2004; and Professor of Neurology in 2007. 

Professor Schott runs a weekly multi-discliplinary Cognitive Disorders Clinic as part of the integrated Cognitive Disorders Service at Queen Square, and oversee the dementia CSF diagnostic service. He has published >330 papers on dementia and ageing. 

In 2019 he was appointed as the inaugural Chief Medical Officer to Alzheimer's Research UK, Euope's biggest dementia research charity.