A University of Warwick student has taken a rather unusual path to crack the code on the problem of dementia.

Ceri Lyn-Adams, a PhD student, is studying fruit flies as a part of her research to understand more aspects of Alzheimer's disease.

Speaking about her study at the Alzheimer's Research Trust conference in Bristol, which is the biggest Alzheimer's conference in the United Kingdom, Lyn-Adams said, "We are using the humble fruit fly to study the protein which forms tangles in the brain during Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia".

Ms. Lyn-Adams hopes that by putting research efforts in this particular protein and finding out how it damages the brain of patients suffering from Dementia, a basis can be formed for developing new treatments.

Rebecca Wood, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, the charity that funds PhDs of scholars like Lyn-Adams, said that such projects are very essential to the future research of dementia.

Ms. Wood, calling research on dementia as "seriously underfunded", also stated that if a cure is to be found, a lot more funding is necessary for research.

According to statistics released by the Alzheimer's Research Trust, 75% of the medical research budget of the government goes to cancer research, and only about 2.5 per cent goes towards research on dementia.