There are many different types of dementia and getting a clear diagnosis is difficult as the symptoms of one dementia may overlap with another. Fronto-temporal dementia (FTD) is the name for a group of dementias, of which there are several sub-types.Currently, diagnosis of FTD relies on a doctor taking images of the patient’s brain and talking to the patient and their family about the symptoms being experienced. It is the progression of the disease that ultimately allows a diagnosis of FTD. This means that patients with FTD generally wait longer for the right help than those with other dementias, where there are well-established biomarkers which can be easily detected and measured.Earlier diagnosis of any disease allows doctors to better manage the patient symptoms and allows for new treatments to be tested at a stage in the disease where they could make a difference to the patient’s quality of life and overall lifespan.Specific subtypes of FTD (called FTD-TDP-43) leave a signature in the brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of the patient. This signature is a misfolded protein, called TDP-43. Brain tissue is difficult to sample when a patient is alive, but CSF is routinely sampled in hospitals every day. We have a test which can detect misfolded TDP-43 in brain and CSF tissue with high specificity however it has not been adopted by many diagnostic laboratories due to complexities in producing and handling the assay components.  We propose to supply these assay components and a protocol to another laboratory to demonstrate that the assay can give reproducible results when transferred between laboratories.  This will be the first step in getting other diagnostic labs to adopt this new and clinically useful diagnostic assay for FTD.