Europe’s Alzheimer’s research needs generational renewal, warns neurology expert

This article is part of our special report Europe’s race to deliver a new era of dementia care.

Despite promising strides in European dementia research, Hungarian neurologist Tibor Kovács warns that turning science into patient care still depends too heavily on national systems.

In an interview with Euractiv during the “Mind the Future” summit in Milan, Tibor Kovács, Full Professor and Deputy Director at the Department of Neurology at Semmelweis University in Budapest, welcomed the growing momentum behind international cooperation on dementia. But he also issued a warning: cooperation is not the problem - implementation is.

“There is extensive collaboration through various European and international grants,” Kovács said, welcoming the increasing involvement of less-resourced partners in cutting-edge research through inclusive application systems. “The trend is clearly moving in a positive direction, which is promising for the future.”

However, turning research into patient care remains a much tougher task. “When it comes to translating that research into clinical practice, things become much more dependent on national contexts,” he explained. In other words, supranational efforts may push the frontier of discovery, but clinical neuroscience still lives - and often stalls - within domestic borders.

Keep it local

Any common European regulation, he added, would still need to be adapted to local realities: “Applied and clinical research must be grounded in specific national circumstances.” Despite these challenges, Kovács remains cautiously hopeful: more funding, he said, could help smaller institutions take part in research at the highest level.

And in Hungary, that kind of shift is sorely needed. While the country has long had a strong tradition in neuroscience, Kovács pointed out that this strength lies mainly in basic science, not in clinical applications. “We still face a lot of handicaps,” he said, particularly when it comes to the use of new biomarkers for early diagnosis of degenerative dementias.

A few centres in Hungary are conducting high-level clinical research on dementias and movement disorders, but staffing shortages and limited resources continue to slow progress. For Kovács, the solution must begin with generational renewal: “We need to attract young researchers into the field, starting from university years.”

The challenge isn’t a lack of talent - quite the opposite. Many Hungarian researchers, he said, are working on neurodegenerative diseases abroad. “The idea,” he added, “is to bring those brains back and improve the local research environment.”

Until then, the gap between what is discovered and what is delivered will remain. And for countries like Hungary, bridging that gap is now the real frontier.

Alessia Peretti, Cesare Ceccato

[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv's Advocacy Lab ]