10 Dec 21. LBC funding update

The Lothian Birth Cohort has received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, which will fund major core activities within the cohort, and also welcomes new co-investigators to the team.

The Lothian Birth Cohort (LBC) has recently received ~£2M funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), a body that is part of the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI).

The funding will run until 2025, and will allow cognitive testing and brain magnetic resonance (MR) imaging scans of participants for the 6^th and 7^th times in the study, when the participants will be around 87 years old.

It will fund the cohorts’ major core activities and offer a hugely valuable platform for the continued development of further specific projects with the team’s local and international collaborators.

With this, the LBC welcomes new Co-Investigators to the team, Dr Susana Muñoz Maniega, Dr Janie Corley, Dr Sarah Harris, Dr Susan Shenkin, and Dr Michelle Luciano, who have each been with the study for more than a decade, and add substantially to the strong cross-college Investigator team.

We asked Dr Simon Cox, Director of the Lothian Birth Cohort Studies, his thoughts regarding the funding award.

 “I am delighted that the BBSRC will be the core funders of the LBC studies. Continuing to collect data as the special Lothian Birth Cohort members come up to their 90^th birthdays is critical in helping us to understand how and why peoples’ brain and cognitive skills age so differently, at a time of life when dementia risk accelerates markedly. It will also fund our irreplaceable 8 core staff without whom the study would not be possible. ”

The LBC studies are also funded by Age UK and the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.