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Picture imperfect: Going beyond imaging amyloid in Alzheimer's disease

Nature Medicine volume 22, pages 1067–1068 (2016)Cite this article

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One of the reasons that PET imaging technology has been so important for studying Alzheimer's disease is that it enables researchers to examine the brains of living people at the molecular level. Before the advent of PET imaging for Alzheimer's, scientists were limited to studying the illness in cells and animal models, as well as postmortem human tissue. In PET imaging studies, individuals with Alzheimer's receive an infusion of a drug that binds to a protein of interest, with a radioactive tag attached. Investigators can then track the amount and spatial distribution of the target protein in the brain, recorded as evidence of the tracer's radioactive decay.

Imaging really fills a gap, and it's changing the scene quite a lot already.

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  1. Ellie Kincaid is Nature Medicine's news intern, based in New York.,

    Ellie Kincaid

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  1. Ellie Kincaid
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Kincaid, E. Picture imperfect: Going beyond imaging amyloid in Alzheimer's disease. Nat Med 22, 1067–1068 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm1016-1067

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