David C Perry
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Neuroscience
Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a common cause of dementia that begins at an early age. In its behavioral variant (bvFTD), the brain disease reshapes personality, social behavior and emotional life.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
frontotemporal dementia
bvFTD
neurodegeneration
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Determine which factors predict a stable, certain bvFTD diagnosis at the first visit, by following 60 patients over time with neurological exams, cognitive testing and structural and functional neuroimaging.
- Identify clinical, gene expression and imaging profiles that predict the underlying brain pathology, using records from 284 patients with bvFTD who were examined at autopsy.
- Use longitudinal data from patients with bvFTD to find factors that accurately predict disease course, including how fast decline occurs and whether motor symptoms develop.
More about the research
Diagnosing it is hard, especially at a patient's first visit, when symptoms may be mild. Other dementias and psychiatric illnesses can look similar, and doctors sometimes revise a bvFTD diagnosis after following a patient over time. Even when the diagnosis is clear, more than 15 different underlying brain pathologies (the actual disease processes seen in brain tissue) can cause bvFTD. Its course also varies widely: some patients decline within 2–3 years, while others live for more than a decade. Few reliable signs predict which path a patient will take.
Why it matters
Patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and their families often face uncertain diagnoses and unclear predictions about the future. Better first-visit markers could guide clinicians, give families more accurate information and help refine diagnostic criteria. They could also make it easier to enroll the right patients in clinical trials of treatments aimed at specific molecular causes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David John Irwin
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Neuroscience
Test whether FTLD-Tau and FTLD-TDP show distinct layer-specific and regional patterns of iron-rich gliosis (activated support cells) in postmortem brain, using multiplexed immunofluorescence and 7T MRI-guided digital histology of the Penn FTLD brain bank.
Beth Snitz
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Recruit 300 older adults and conduct yearly neuropsychological testing, neurological exams, and assessments of function, behavior and mood, to support studies of cognitive aging.
Rhoda Au
Boston University, MA·Public Health & Epidemiology
Collect digital cognitive metrics (dCog) from a digital recorder, digital pen and smartphone apps in the BU ADRC cohort, and compare people who are positive versus negative for the amyloid-tau-neurodegeneration (A/T/N) signature.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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