Neuropathology Core

ABSTRACT – ALLFTD2: NEUROPATHOLOGY CORE Neuropathology remains the gold standard for neurodegenerative disease diagnosis, and the overall goals of the ALLFTD consortium are strongly linked to post-mortem characterization of each patient’s disease. Despite some progress, it remains difficult to predict the underlying neuropathological diagnosis in patients with FTLD. Ongoing efforts seek to uncover disease-specific biofluid and molecular imaging biomarkers for sorting patients into pathologically homogeneous, clinical trial-ready cohorts. Developing such biomarkers relies on neuropathology not only to provide a diagnostic gold standard but also as a source of biomarker discovery- enabling tissue. Moreover, post-mortem tissue provides a rich source of fundamental information about disease pathogenesis. The goals of this ALLFTD Neuropathology Core (NPC) are to support the clinical, genetic, imaging, and biomarker research efforts throughout the ALLFTD network and worldwide. We will build on momentum gained during the previous cycle by deploying our distributed network of neuropathology sites equipped for FTLD diagnosis to provide the diagnostic gold standard against which in vivo diagnostic biomarkers are measured. Researchers developing these biomarkers will benefit from ultimately learning each patient’s underlying disease, which may influence the behavior of any biomarker type. For these reasons, this NPC will strive to obtain a state-of-the-art neuropathological diagnosis on every ALLFTD participant who dies during the study period. The NPC will work with ALLFTD investigators in the Clinical, Technology and Remote Assessment, Data Management and Statistical, Genetics, Neuroimaging, and Biofluid Cores and Projects 1 and 2 to support the proposed ALLFTD studies. Increasingly, pathological correlation studies require active multidisciplinary interactions that include neuropathology experts who can ensure that neuropathological data are analyzed and interpreted in a way that keeps pace with the constantly evolving knowledge in the field.