Alzheimer's disease
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Our current work in Alzheimer's disease (AD) focuses on how emerging neurotherapeutics, such as the anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies lecanemab and donanemab, alter the retention of pathological proteins in the brain and change brain function and cognition. This work involves neuroimaging of patients with AD before, during, and after initiation of these agents.
Our manuscripts relevant to this work in Alzheimer's disease:
More specifically, neurofluid circulation has gained much attention in light of its likely relevance to neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular disorders, including but not limited to Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (ADRDs). Fundamental to the effective circulation of neurofluids is cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) production activity, which occurs within the choroid plexus (ChP) complexes located within each of the four brain ventricles; despite this, we lack rigorous and quantitative methods for quantifying ChP activity, thereby limiting abilities to evaluate CSF circulation in different neurodegenerative disorders, as well as in response to emerging therapies. The overall goal of this work is to refine and clinically evaluate neuroimaging methods to enable quantitation of ChP anatomy and function non-invasively in vivo; if successful, this will allow for ChP function to be interrogated reliably in the growing number of applications where neurofluid and CSF circulatory dysfunction are implicated. Findings will provide the first data on how ChP activity, quantified non-invasively in vivo from high spatial resolution perfusion MRI, reflects variation in traditional or novel fluid efflux. Successful completion will provide new acquisition and post-processing resources, which will provide a foundation for using these methods in the growing number of applications of CSF clearance dysfunction.