AFTD Pilot Grants – our longest-running funding program – provide critical support to early-career investigators and encourage them to become lasting contributors to FTD research. Despite the challenges imposed by COVID-19, we maintained our commitment to supporting promising new researchers and are pleased to announce our 2020 Pilot Grant recipients.

The 2020 Well-Being in FTD Pilot Grant was awarded to Allison Lindauer, PhD (Oregon Health and Science University), for her proposal, “STELLA-FTD: Using technology to support FTD caregivers.” Dr. Lindauer’s project will customize an existing telehealth program (STELLA) to address the unique needs of FTD caregivers, based on input from the caregivers themselves. The feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of the revised intervention will be tested with family caregivers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming, with an emphasis on hard-to-reach rural residents in these states. STELLA-FTD could bridge a gap in FTD services by providing an intervention accessible to any care partner with a computer and internet access.

Maria Catarina Silva, PhD (Massachusetts General Hospital), was awarded the 2020 Basic Science Pilot Grant to study a class of drugs that ramp up the process responsible for removing damaged or dysfunctional proteins, known as autophagy, to determine if – and how – they reduce the abnormal accumulation of the FTD-associated protein tau. A better understanding of how these drugs promote autophagy could lead to effective treatments that prevent tau accumulation in FTD. A former recipient of an AFTD Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Silva is an example of how AFTD grant programs foster career development for the next generation of FTD researchers.