LATE 2022 Meeting brings together world renowned experts

The University of Kentucky Alzheimer's Disease Research Center and the University of Kentucky Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine have been at the forefront of studying dementia-related diseases including common Alzheimer's disease "mimic" conditions. An important dementia-related disease is limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy (LATE), which was recently recognized by a team co-led by Dr. Peter Nelson of UKMC. LATE is an under-appreciated disease entity that affects approximately 1/4th of people who live beyond 80 years of age. On Feb 11 there was the first-ever conference about LATE and Dr. Nelson was co-organizer of the meeting (https://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dn/late-2022). Speakers and discussion leaders at the LATE 2022 meeting were world-renowned experts from many disciplines, and the meeting was directly supported by NIH. The meeting was attended by over 300 people from around the world and has generated a real buzz! There was a parallel call for abstracts that produced a YouTube compilation of presentations that are really outstanding and enabled other people (from UK and from around the world) to contribute. These can be accessed from the above conference website.

Notably, we are in fact recruiting and giving study drug in the first and only LATE clinical trial, right now, here at UK (https://sbcoa.med.uky.edu/sites/default/files/SMART%20HS%20Flyer.pdf). The University of Kentucky is among the best places in the country for dementia-related clinical trials, and interested persons are encouraged to contact the clinical team at 859-323-5550.