Bringing together clinicians and researchers in the UK working on frontotemporal dementia and associated disorders.
FTDUK is co-ordinated by Professor Jonathan Rohrer (University College London), Professor James Rowe (University of Cambridge), Dr Kathryn Bowles (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Jenna Gregory (University of Aberdeen).
We run an Early Career Researcher prize for FTD researchers – this is open to any researcher who is a research assistant, PhD student or postdoctoral researcher within 5 years of completion of their PhD.
We have been running FTD UK since 2011 and after an absence during the Covid pandemic we returned in 2023 to run our 10th meeting. The meeting remains free to attend and was in Edinburgh in 2025. Registration will reopen in early 2026 for the next meeting, which will take place at UCL.
We are very thankful to Alzheimer’s Research UK and the Guarantors of Brain who have kindly helped to fund the event each year through conference grants, and to the Alzheimer’s Society who have funded the Early Career Researcher Prize awards.
2025 – 12th Annual Meeting – Edinburgh – 30th May
| 9.30am | Registration | |
| 10.00am | Welcome to the meeting and introduction | |
| 10.10am | Novel imaging modalities for early detection | Holly Spence (University of Aberdeen) |
| 10.30am | Elevated cerebrospinal fluid UCHL1 in asymptomatic C9orf72 hexanucleotide repeat expansion carriers | Lizzie Dellar (University of Oxford) |
| 10.50am | Symptomatic trials in FTD | Alexander Murley (University of Cambridge) |
| 11.10am | Coffee break | |
| 11.40am | Synaptic gene expression changes in FTD due to the MAPT 10+16 mutation | Tara Spires-Jones (University of Edinburgh) |
| 12.00pm | Synaptopathy in FTD- investigating presynaptic convergence of disease pathomechanisms | Emma Clayton (King's College London) |
| 12.20pm | Astrocyte contributions to pathological tau accumulation | Wendy Noble (University of Exeter) |
| 12.40pm | Lunch | |
| 1.40pm | B cell repertoire mining of disease resilient individuals to identify novel, protective auto-antibodies for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases | Jane Osbourn (Alchemab Therapeutics) |
| 2.00pm | Sortilin as a target for treatment of FTD-GRN | Imogen Swift (Vesper Bio) |
| 2.20pm | Where does FTD fit into national UK initiatives? | |
| 3.00pm | Coffee break | |
| 3.30pm | Alzheimer's Society ECR prizes - introduction and award | |
| 3.35pm | Basic Science Prize for Early Career UK FTD Researcher sponsored by the Alzheimer's Society | |
| 3.45pm | Clinical Science Prize for Early Career UK FTD Researcher sponsored by the Alzheimer's Society | |
| 3.55pm | Summary | |
| 4.00pm | Finish |