Dr Emma Anderson, Dr Rachel James, Dr Peter Dunne and Dr Sinead English have been selected for their work on dementia, climate change, respecting trans and non-binary identities and nutrition and immunity in pregnancy, respectively.
Dr Emma Anderson of the Bristol Medical School and her team are aiming to understand the genetic and environmental causal determinants of dementia with a vascular component (DVC). She said:
"The overall aim of my UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship is to reduce the global burden of vascular dementia. The fellowship will help me to identify genetic and environmental determinants of vascular dementia, which is understudied despite contributing to over 50% of all dementia cases.
“I will be genotyping about 7000 brains in the UK Brain Bank Network. This will enable me to perform the largest genetic study of vascular dementia to date, which will help us to develop tools to identify susceptible individuals and establish both potential prevention options and therapeutic drug targets. The genotype data generated will be returned to the brain banks, which will form a fantastic resource for other scientists for decades to come."