CONFERENCE COVERAGE SERIES
Frontotemporal Dementia Treatment: 2012 Study Group
Washington, D.C., U.S.A.
12 June 2012
Ironically, perhaps, progress in Alzheimer's diagnosis—think CSF and amyloid PET—may boost the profile of other dementing diseases that are often misdiagnosed as AD in clinical practice. This has not gone unnoticed among researchers on frontotemporal dementias (FTDs). They are combining their newfound ability to definitively eliminate AD as a cause of a patient's symptoms with significant advances in the science of FTDs themselves.
Out comes a public-private initiative to press ahead with therapeutic trials. In June 2012 in Washington, D.C., academic and industry leaders in FTD met with scientists at the Food and Drug Administration for a one-day powwow of what's in hand versus what still needs to be done in order to launch well-designed therapy studies for these emotionally wrenching neurodegenerative diseases. The need is desperate. No single drug is approved for FTD, and the many other drugs these patients receive barely help them, experts say.
Scientists Strategize With Regulators for Frontal Assault on FTD
Deterioration of executive and emotional dysfunction hint at why frontotemporal degeneration is a crushing disease, particularly for caregivers...
Toward FTD Therapeutic Trials: Diagnosis Firm, Outcomes Still Soft
Scientists from academia, industry, and funding organizations met to discuss precompetitive steps in the preparation for clinical trials for frontotemporal degeneration...
Case Studies Crystallize Trial Ideas at FTD Conference
Researchers and regulators broke the heterogeneity of clinical syndromes and molecular pathologies of the FTLD spectrum of diseases into three case studies...
Take It From the Agency: First FTD Drug May Be an Orphan
One purpose of the FTSG meeting was to give its scientists an opportunity to show the Food and Drug Administration how far their research has come...
For FTD Drug Development, a Q&A With Regulators
Regulators and industry scientists, and other steering committee members from the FTSG submitted questions to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...