For years, our lab has been focusing on exploring novel biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases including mild cognitive decline (MCI), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Down syndrome. We have achieved abundant research results in measuring biomarkers in human blood by using Immunomagnetic reduction (IMR) assay to detect Aβ42/Aβ40 and tau protein in plasma. In addition, the clinical study of alpha-synuclein and p-tau protein is in full swing, which prompted us to extend our research towards p-alpha-synuclein and TDP-43 to develop multiple biomarkers with the aim of improving diagnostic accuracy.
In the past decade, we also put emphasis in the field of neuroimaging and have achieved considerable results.
A quantitative study of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in patients with AD and related MCI was first conducted in 2009, which has been valued by the academic community. After that, there have been continued efforts focused on correlations between MRI and neuropsychology, clinical manifestation, blood biomarkers, and positron emission tomography (PET). Furthermore, we evaluated the efficacy of pharmacotherapy for AD by the application of visual scoring system of MTA, as well as explored the relationship between beta-amyloid accumulation, cortical thickness and blood biomarkers by pixel analysis method.
Applying the results mentioned above, we have been assiduous in the research of subjective cognitive decline (SCD) over these two years. People with SCD perform normally on cognitive function however they may be in the preclinical stage of AD. Therefore, more sensitive method for the quantitative analysis of MRI is needed to investigate cortical thickness and volume with the purpose of revealing correlation between structure and function in the human brain. Moreover, a follow-up study combined with molecular imaging technology on preclinical (SCD) and prodromal (MCI) stage of AD is underway.