Supplementary evidence from the Wellcome
Trust
Further to your email of 26 January 2005, asking
the Trust to supplement our written evidence to the House of Lords
Select Committee on Science and Technology regarding "Scientific
Aspects of Ageing", please find below some more detailed
explanation of how we arrived at the figures provided.
As we discussed prior to submitting our evidence,
the Trust funds a wide range of research that could be related
to ageing, with a sub-set more narrowly focused on, for example,
conditions that affect the elderly, but awards are not made through
a specific scheme.
In paragraph 3 of our evidence, we estimated
that approximately £877 million of the research funded by
the Wellcome Trust over the last 10 years is directly or indirectly
related to ageing, using our broadest definition of ageing-related
research.
In our evidence we gave a break-down of some
Trust funding in key research areas related to ageing in Annex
1. A total of £52.51 million is specifically related to "ageing
or longevity" research, as these words appear either in the
title of a grant or are specified in classification fields. The
way this search was performed means that a grant cannot be "double
counted", even where it can trigger more than one of the
keywords.
VISION
The relatively large amount of funding that
you note went to vision research shown in Annex 1 can be in part
explained by the fact that the Trust supported five buildings.
A total of £31 million was awarded through the Joint Infrastructure
Fund[14]
(JIF) and a subsequent similar scheme, for buildings to conduct
research into neuroscience and vision, some of which may be related
to scientific aspects of ageing.
The Trust also ran a specific Vision Research
Fellowship scheme between 1994 and 1998, which funded 17 Fellows
at a total cost of £2.4 million. However not all of the funding
shown as relating to vision will be specific to ageing.
HEALTH CONSEQUENCES
OF POPULATION
CHANGE
A more targeted public health approach to ageing
populations is incorporated within the Wellcome Trust's Health
Consequences of Population Change Programme. [15]
This is a five-year initiative which focuses on research into
the health impact of shifts in population structure and dynamics
in the developing world. One of five key research themes relates
to demographic transitions, particularly public health issues
of ageing populations where this poses a new set of problems for
public health in the developing world.
The Trust has funded a number of grants in the
area including a major award to a Centre of Excellence in Population
Research in Costa Rica, along with others, some of which have
been highlighted in the Wellcome Trust Annual Review 2004 (enclosed,
see page 44). So far 13 awards have been made in the area of "Ageing
or Longevity", totalling £2.1 million and these awards
are included under the total for "Ageing or Longevity"
shown in Annex 1.
February 2005
14 JIF was a £750 million partnership between
the Wellcome Trust, the Office of Science and Technology, and
the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Buildings in
Sussex, London, Belfast and Newcastle were supported for research
into neuroscience and vision. Back
15
The programme is funded from 2001-06. See our website, http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/node2143.html. Back
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