The week before last, Barbara Borroni, Daniela Galimberti, and their teams, hosted the annual Genetic Frontotemporal dementia Initiative (GENFI) Summer Investigators Meeting in Brescia, Italy. The two-day meeting brings together GENFI investigators from across Europe and Canada, for a series of insightful presentations, engaging discussions, and invaluable collaboration.
The first day kicked off with a warm welcome from Barbara and our GENFI core team from UCL, followed by an update on participant recruitment and consortium publications. The morning session then finished with a series of flash talks by the newest GENFI sites, which saw investigators introduce their teams.
Throughout the day, the meeting delved into various topics, with sessions dedicated to clinical, cognitive and digital projects, fluid biomarker research, advances in imaging, and an update on genetics work. These sessions demonstrate the breadth of expertise within the GENFI community and offer promising avenues for future research.
The second day consisted of a series of updates from the GENFI working groups, who shed light on new areas of research in: PET imaging (such as substudies of novel PET tracers, looking at new biomarkers of tau and neuroinflammation), language (with focus on assessing the acoustic and linguistic aspects of speech and language), diversity (which considers how to ensure equality and inclusivity in the GENFI study), and therapeutics (which has the target of increasing the number of clinical trials in genetic FTD) – further emphasising the multidisciplinary approach of the consortium’s efforts.
Day two also hosted a feedback session, which summarised the opinions of the members of the GENFI Participant Engagement Board (PEB) on current hot topics in research. The PEB is a group of GENFI participants who advise investigators on the progress of the study and research. This session considered opinions on PET imaging, digitalised testing, and forthcoming clinical trials (details to follow).
Overall, it was a great meeting full of exciting new research and discussions of future plans. We look forward to the forthcoming research of GENFI investigators in the lead up to next year’s meeting in Barcelona, Spain.
For more information on the GENFI study, the working groups, as well as a full list of GENFI publications, please refer to the study website (https://www.genfi.org/).
Phoebe, on behalf of the FTD talk team.
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