Large 'high risk, high reward' grant awarded for ALS Frontotemporal spectrum disorder research

Dr Jenna Gregory (Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences) and Dr Mathew Horrocks (School of Chemistry) are part of an international consortium linked with Columbia University and New York University that has been awarded 8.4 million Dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of the prestigious high risk, high reward transformative research programme to explore the molecular underpinnings of functional impairments in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal spectrum disorder (ALS-FTSD).

ALS-FTSD is a devastating neurodegenerative disease spectrum for which there are no biomarkers and only limited treatments, stemming from a poor understanding of its pathogenesis.

This funding, for a project titled "The Physical Biology of Neurodegeneration in Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis/Frontotemporal Dementia" will cover work over the next 5 years that will allow the integration of novel biophysical tools with spatially resolved transcriptomic and proteomic analyses across different scales (from the cellular to the organismal).

The goal is to unveil how disease-associated pathology is linked to dysfunction in specific cell types in ALS-FTSD, which may in turn foster precision medicine-based treatment strategies.