Paul Matthews leads Precision Brain Health Session at Inaugural World Brain Health Forum
Paul Matthews, Director of the Franklin, recently led the Precision Brain Health Session at the first World Brain Health Forum, hosted by UNESCO and the Paris Brain Institute on 15 January in Paris, with a Keynote Pitch.
Paul described advances made in understanding differences in the way people develop cognitive problems in older ages. He highlighted the emerging potential to understand brain resilience using similar approaches, suggesting the promise of realising future lifelong brain health not only through prevention or treatment of disease but also by strengthening natural protections. However, he also challenged the assembled group with the need to gather data from wider, more diverse populations if benefits were to be realised by all.
This first World Brain Health Forum was promoted by the French Government in advance of their hosting of the 52nd G7 Summit to be held in Evian-les-Bains in June. The inaugural address for the summit was delivered by Khaled El-Enany, Director-General of UNESCO. He was followed by opening speeches from former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
The meeting brought together leaders from academia, industry and international organisations to jointly debate ways of achieving better brain health across the globe.
The Franklin has committed itself to developing innovative tools to accelerate therapeutics development for body and brain. One specific area of focus – led by Dr. Michael Grange – has been on finding new ways of understanding age-related changes in the brain.
Paul Matthews reflected, “Seeing so many leaders together for this event gave me hope that there is a global commitment to address the challenge of brain health. The delegates were excited about emerging opportunities to change the paradigms for therapeutics development. I was pleased to reflect on the Franklin’s strong commitment to this.”