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Mission
The mission of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) is to promote and conduct multidisciplinary clinical and basic research to increase the understanding of the causes and mechanisms leading to brain dysfunction and degeneration in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Lewy body dementia (LBD), Frontotemporal degeneration (FTD), Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Primary lateral sclerosis (PLS), Motor neuron disease (MND), and related disorders that occur increasingly with advancing age. Implicit in the mission of the CNDR are two overarching goals: 1.) Find better ways to cure and treat these disorders, 2. Provide training to the next generation of scientists.
“My goal for CNDR is not only to collaborate with researchers at Penn and from institutions across the globe with the mutual goal of finding better ways to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases, but also to inspire and encourage the next generation of scientists on the importance of investigating these disorders that occur more frequently with advancing age.” – Virginia M.-Y. Lee, PhD, Director, CNDR
John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD | 1946 - 2022
In loving memory of John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD
Latest Research
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Comprehensive Genotype-Phenotype Analysis in POLR3-Related Disorders
Sunday, July 20, 2025
RNA Polymerase III (POLR3)-related disorders (POLR3-RD) are a group of clinical entities characterized by causal variants in genes encoding Pol III subunits, including POLR3A, POLR3B, POLR1C, POLR1D, POLR3D, POLR3E, POLR3F, POLR3GL, POLR3H, and POLR3K. These typically cause developmental phenotypes affecting the central nervous system, the eyes, connective tissues including bones, teeth, endocrine axes, and the reproductive system. Similar phenotypes can be caused by variants in separate subunit...
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Clinical Performance of the Elecsys CSF pTau<sub>181</sub>/Aβ<sub>42</sub> Ratio for Concordance with Tau-PET in Two Independent Cohorts
Sunday, July 20, 2025
CONCLUSION: The Elecsys CSF pTau(181)/Aβ(42) ratio may be a reliable tool for identifying tau pathology in clinical practice.
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Accelerating biomedical discoveries in brain health through transformative neuropathology of aging and neurodegeneration
Saturday, July 19, 2025
Transformative neuropathology is redefining human brain research by integrating foundational descriptive pathology with advanced methodologies. These approaches, spanning multi-omics studies and machine learning applications, will drive discovery for the identification of biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and complex disease patterns through comprehensive analyses of postmortem human brain tissue. Yet critical challenges remain, including the sustainability of brain banks, expanding donor...