Molecular PET imaging and plasma biomarkers in Alzheimer´s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Description: This project aims to develop and characterize new brain and fluid biomarkers to increase our understanding of the cause of future cognitive impairment and allow implication of new biomarkers in clinical praxis. AD has a long presymptomatic period where the amyloid plaques start to accumulate decades before clinical symptoms followed by tau deposition. The contribution of reactive astrogliosis in AD has until recently largely been overlooked but new observations suggest reactive astrogliosis to precede other AD pathological hallmarks. Multiple forms of astrocytes stress the importance to characterize new astrocytic in AD continuum and their possible role in new drug treatment strategies. We plan to apply a translational approach using both in vitro and in vivo molecular brain imaging techniques visualizing multiple pathological and functional changes in AD and other non-AD dementia disorders. We combine PET tracer techniques with measurement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), plasma biomarkers and cognition with aim to evaluate the clinical value of new fluid biomarker in clinical setting but also to obtain a deeper insight and understanding regarding the time course of brain reactive astrogliosis in relation to deposition of tau in brain as well as to perform in vitro imaging studies characterizing the binding properties and regional brain localization of new astroglia, tau and synaptic protein tracers in AD as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.
Funder: Vetenskapsrådet
Amount: SEK 4,800,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: Project grant
Start date: 2024-01-01
End date: 2027-12-31
Investigator: Agneta Nordberg
Institution: Karolinska Institutet
Funded outputs count: 4
Funder award ID: 2023-02649
OpenAlex ID: G3226853653