Wellcome's 10 Year Plan Published

Wellcome's mustachioed head-honcho Mark Walport outlined the Trust's 10 year plan yesterday. Based around 5 challenges, the plan is intended to give scientists plenty of time to develop solutions.

"We face many serious challenges, including ageing populations, the threat of global climate change and the emergence of new diseases”, said Walport. The full list consists of:

• Maximising the health benefits of genetics and genomics: Understanding how genes affect our health and disease to develop new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent illness.


• Understanding the brain: Exploring how the billions of nerves in the brain allow us to think, learn and remember, so that we can find new approaches to treating mental illness and neurological disorders such as stroke, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.


• Combating infectious disease: Examining the link between infectious disease in animals and humans to develop new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat the bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases that kill millions of people worldwide every year.


• Investigating development, ageing and chronic disease: Understanding how the human body develops, functions and ages, so that we can tackle the growing burden of chronic disease across the world.


• Connecting environment, nutrition and health: Developing new initiatives to examine critical issues such as malnutrition and obesity, and the health impacts of climate change and population migration.
  

Walport went on: “The Wellcome Trust is extraordinarily well positioned to give researchers the freedom and security to pursue the questions that will provide answers to these challenges. But scientific discoveries – and their application to patient benefit - take time, and that is why we are setting out our plans for the next decade."
More detail is available here.