Professor Clive Ballard

About me:

Clive is a psychiatrist who was driven to study dementia after witnessing the poor conditions in which people with dementia were cared for. He has led or co-authored well over 600 research papers and attracted grant income in excess of £150m over his research career, and has won several awards including the Weston Brain Institute Outstanding Achievement Award. Clive has led more dementia and cognitive health trials than anyone else in Europe over the last decade. He was featured in the Lancet Neurology for his achievements.

His main research specialisms are drug discovery, dementia prevention and improving care for people with dementia in residential homes. He is also an expert in Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease Dementia, and is an advocate of better prescribing and treatment pathways to improve outcomes for individuals. Before joining Exeter, Clive held directorship roles at King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry and at the Alzheimer’s Society. He was pivotal in the successful campaign to overturn a NICE decision and make anti-dementia drugs available for people with dementia.

As Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean for Medicine, he focused on expanding the University of Exeter's College of Medicine and Health (additional places for Medical Students, Nursing and Neuroscience Programmes and broadened PGT offering) and raising its profile through collaboration across the board with other highly esteemed scientists and institutions. He has also focused strongly on obtaining philanthropic support for the College such as the Mireille Gillings Neuroimaging Centre at the RD&E.

Clive continues to maintain his busy research portfolio, focusing especially on Commercial Clinical Trial opportunities and publishing prolifically in high-ranking journals.

Interests:

Clive’s work has highlighted the harms of antipsychotic medications in people with dementia and made a massive contribution to the 50% reduction in the use of these agents nationally and internationally. Further work has demonstrated the benefits of non-pharmacological treatments for the management of agitation in people with dementia.

Clive has led studies which highlighted the substantial benefits to neuropsychiatric symptoms from more effective treatment of pain. He has led pivotal studies with the novel and safer antipsychotic pimavanserin for the treatment of psychosis in people with Parkinson’s disease psychosis and Alzheimer’s disease, and was a principle investigator on another recent trial of mirtazapine for the treatment of agitation in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Other current work includes: the SMART-AD drug discovery programme funded by the Wellcome Trust, which has led to new ongoing clinical trials of the novel, re-purposed treatments fasudil, liraglutide and phenserine for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies; the MRC funded Deep and Frequent Phenotyping cohort study; and further RCTs to evaluate a digital adaptation of our WHELD care home programme to improve person-centred care, which includes a study specifically adapting the programme for the needs of care homes during the COVID19 pandemic.

An additional strand of work in Clive’s portfolio has focussed on the maintenance of cognitive health and the prevention of cognitive decline. Key clinical trials have demonstrated the potential utility of online brain training for maintaining cognitive health and function in later life, the interaction of lifestyle and genetic factors and the role of mental health in maintaining cognitive function. Building on this, the ongoing PROTECT programme is an online cohort study supported by more than 30,000 participants over the age of 50, with nested intervention studies including further studies of brain training, physical exercise and vitamin D. The programme has excellent support from participants, 90% of who have supported the programme for more than 5 years, and PROTECT is now also live in the USA, Norway, Spain and Canada, and will soon have more than 100,000 participants worldwide. We have recently integrated a cutting-edge new neuropsychological test battery (FLAME) into the PROTECT platform, which is free of major learning effects, has milli-sec accuracy for reaction times and is highly sensitive to change.

Qualifications:

Education and awards

1987 - Leicester University, MB ChB (Medicine)
1991 - University of Birmingham, MMedSci
1992 - University of Birmingham, M.R.C.Psych.
1995 - Leicester University, MD
2015 - Fellow Academy Medical Sciences

Career:

Current and previous posts

1992–1995: Lecturer in Psychiatry, University of Birmingham
1995–2000: MRC clinical Fellow/Senior Lecturer Old Age Psychiatry, University of Newcastle
2000–2002: Reader in Old Age Psychiatry, University of Newcastle, UK
2002–2003: Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, University of Newcastle, UK
2003–2013: Director of Research, Alzheimer’s Society
2003–2016: Professor of Age Related Diseases, King’s College London
2016–2022: Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of Medicine, University of Exeter
2022-2023: Interim Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Dean, University of Exeter Medical School
2016-present: Professor of Age Related Diseases, University of Exeter