Risk and Modifying factors in Fronto Temporal Dementia

Fronto-Temporal-Dementia (FTD) is a devastating progressive early onset dementia with a strong genetic influence. Currently, seven genes have been identified that explain >50% of familial cases, but how these different genes lead to a very similar clinical phenotype is still an unanswered question. Currently, there is no cure for FTD and for the development of successful therapies it is essential to understand the role of all genetic and environmental risk factors in the disease process and to investigate which factors are important in the progression of the disease in all patients and which are specific for subgroups of patients. We therefore aim to investigate common and distinctly affected processes in different groups of FTD patients using a combination of genomic and cell biological approaches on tissues of selected patient groups and corresponding animal and cellular model systems. Our integrative approach is novel and necessary for successful therapy development because it allows an unbiased selection of the most suitable targets that can improve our understanding of disease process and in addition will help identify the key genes in the disease process that are the most suitable targets to modify the disease phenotype and thus provide better choices for therapy development.