Professor Ian McKeith, President of the Lewy Body Society and Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Newcastle University’s Institute for Ageing, has been awarded the prestigious European Grand Prix in recognition of his leadership in research into Lewy body dementia.

The €100,000 prize was awarded by the Foundation for Research on Alzheimer’s disease, based at the Hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris, and will contribute towards further research into Lewy body dementia by Professor McKeith and his team.

Professor McKeith leads the International Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) Consortium and is considered one of the global experts in Lewy body dementia.

Commenting on the prize, Professor McKeith said:

“I am delighted for Newcastle’s work to be recognised with this prize. It will support us in answering a key unresolved issue in the field of Lewy body disease research, namely whether the key protein affected, which is called α-synuclein, affects different types of brain cells in different ways. We have reason to believe that this is the case, and will focus on a particular support cell called the astrocyte –  because of its star shape – which has not previously been implicated in the disease, but which we think could be amenable to therapeutic intervention.”

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