Project 455792

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an irreversible, progressive brain condition that affects memory and intellectual skills. People suffering from AD eventually lose their autonomy and are not able to carry out the simplest tasks. The most common form of AD is the late onset sporadic Alzheimer's disease with symptoms that most commonly appear around 65 y.o. AD is characterized by the progressive accumulation of protein aggregates (amyloid and tau) in the brain and cell death. It is now known that the accumulation of these proteins starts before any cognitive symptoms appear. Advances in science now allow us to study the progression of these proteins' accumulation in living individuals from the healthy stages until the symptoms appear. As compared to amyloid imaging, tau has shown to be better associated with cognitive deficits and cell death. Importantly, combining tau and amyloid imaging in the context of longitudinal observations opens unprecedented opportunities to address pressing knowledge gaps in the field of AD pathophysiology. The major deliverable of this project is the 36-month follow up, large-scale, biomarker study describing tau progression using a second-generation tau imaging agent, CSF and plasma measures of tau and the modulation of brain amyloid on these outcomes. These deliverables will: provide better ways to select patients for clinical trials and permit to better estimate sample sizes necessary for estimating the effects of AD therapeutic interventions.