The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) awarded Lauren Massimo, assistant professor at Penn Nursing and a member of the Penn Frontotemporal Degeneration Center, the inaugural AFTD Pilot Grant for Nonpharmacological Therapies and Tools.

Dr. Massimo will lead a team that includes Penn neuropsychologists and smartphone application developers who will use the grant to develop and test an app that will help persons diagnosed with FTD overcome apathy.

In her proposal, Dr. Massimo hypothesized that the app could provide a framework for symptom management in people with behavioral variant FTD, and that regular use of the app would contribute to the achievement of everyday goals and activities of daily life in the population. She further surmised that app use could result in increased functional activity, leading to beneficial returns for care partners, as well.

Dr. Massimo and her team have tested a model version of the app. “The second stage is a clinical trial, and we hope that this Pilot Grant will provide the preliminary data we need to pursue a larger grant from the National Institutes of Health,” she said.