Seminar by Prof. Alexander Drzezga

INM-2, Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany)

Molecular imaging in the brain and beyond

Clinical diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders is limited due to fact that the associated neuropathology starts years to decades ahead of the onset of clinical symptoms. It is commonly well accepted that neurodegenerative disorders are multifactorial, involving different forms of protein aggregations, inflammation, synaptic dysfunction and loss and finally neuronal death. Today, numerous imaging biomarkers are available allowing to detect and monitor these pathologies

, partially long before clinical onset of disease. This includes established markers of neuronal dysfunction and loss such as structural MRI and FDG-PET but also more recently introduced PET tracers for imaging amyloid-plaques and also tau-aggregates. Finally methods for detecting neuroinflammation and synaptic density are already used in experimental settings. It would be of great interest to complement this portfolio of available tools with new imaging markers for other protein aggregation pathologies such as alpha-synuclein, TDP-43 or huntingtin, as well as markers for protein-brain clearance mechanisms in the brain and for general brain ageing phenomena.