Grants Funded

Morgan Family Grant for TDP-43 Research – $120,000 

Drug discovery research in the field of protein TDP-43 received a boost in August 2009, with the announcement of a one-time grant award of $120,000 to Manuela Neumann, MD of the Institute of Neuropathology, University of Zurich. The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) agreed to match the Morgan gift and to help manage The Morgan Family AFTD/ADDF Award for TDP-43 Research.

Dr. Neumann’s project focuses on the fact that the TDP-43 in diseased cells has extra groups of phosphate attached to it; although researchers don’t yet know what is cause and what is affect, they know that in patients with FTD and/or ALS this abnormally phosphorylated TDP-43 clumps together in the nerve cells and doesn’t work properly. Dr. Neumann proposes to identify the specific molecules (called kinases) that control TDP-43 phosphorylation and thus, hopefully, identify valuable targets for drug discovery strategies in FTLD and ALS.”

The Laden Fellowship – $110,000: July 2009 – 2011

The Laden Family Research Fellowship is a grant designed to foster basic, translational, clinical and/or epidemiological FTD research by an outstanding scientist at the beginning of his or her career. Individuals with a Ph.D., M.D. or M.D./PhD. at an academic facility, teaching hospital, or research institution in the U.S. or Canada who were in the first, second, or third year of his/her postdoctoral training at the start of the fellowship term were eligible to apply.

Todd Cohen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Neurodegenerative Research at the University of Pennsylvania, has been named the 2009 Laden Family FTD Fellow. Dr. Cohen received his BS from Penn State and PhD from Duke University, and works in the lab of Virginia Lee, PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. He is studying the cell biology of TDP-43, a protein that malfunctions in both ALS and some FTDs, to better understand how this protein is involved in development and progression of disease in the nerve cell.

AFTD Research Grants

2009
$60,000
John Van Swieten, PhD
Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Resting-State functional MRI in presymptomatic mutation carriers of MAPT or PGRN mutation

2008
$60,000
Rosa Rademakers, PhD
Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL
MicroRNA dysregulation in frontotemporal lobar degeneration

$60,000
Mark Gluck, PhD & Murray Grossman, MD
Rutgers University & U. of Pennsylvania
Insensitivity to Negative (Penalizing) Feedback for Inappropriate Behaviors in FTD Linked to Orbito-Frontal Dysfunction.

2007
$60,000
J. Paul Taylor, MD
U. of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Assessing the molecular genetics of TDP-43-related neurodegeneration using a Drosophila model

$60,000
Marc Cruts, PhD
University of Antwerp
Gene identification in a novel Mendelian FTLD-MND locus

2006
$50,000
Blair Levitt, MD & Ian Mackenzie, MD
University of British Columbia
Generation of a Mouse Model of Familial FTD Caused by Progranulin Mutations

2005
$35,000
Eileen Bigio, MD
Northwestern U. Feinberg School of Medicine
To study the ubiquinated proteins that are found in the “inclusions” that characterize brain cells in FTLD-MND