In partnership with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, AFTD seeks to advance and support promising drug discovery projects for FTD through the Accelerating Drug Discovery for FTD grant program. The program funds projects that focus on lead optimization (designing a drug after a compound is identified that shows promise in treating a disease) and the testing of compounds, biological agents, gene therapies, or repurposed drugs in FTD-relevant cell or animal models.

Kenneth Kosik, MD, the Herriman Professor of Neuroscience at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was awarded an Accelerating Drug Discovery for FTD grant for his research studying the LRP1 cellular receptor, which facilitates the spread of the tau protein. Under normal circumstances, the tau protein helps maintain the structure of neurons in the brain; however, in diseases like FTD, tau can take on an abnormal form and accumulate in a way that causes neurodegeneration.

According to Dr. Kosik’s research, a knockdown of the LRP1 receptor significantly reduced the spread of tau, which has difficulty diffusing across the outer membrane of brain cells without the receptor due to its larger size. Dr. Kosik observed that genetically engineered mice with fewer LRP1 proteins were resistant to tau spreading.

Because his research has highlighted LRP1 as a promising drug target, Dr. Kosik hopes to identify compounds that can block the LRP1 receptor, with the goal of creating an oral medication that can be easily administered to stop the spread of defective tau proteins and halt disease progression.