Guest Speaker: Dr. Heidi Jacobs (Associate Professor of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School)

Talk Title: Focus on the locus coeruleus to detect pre-preclinical Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract: Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by a long asymptomatic stage during which the two pathologic hallmarks, beta-amyloid and tau depositions, accumulate, lead to neurodegeneration and the manifestation of clinical symptoms. Being able to effectively delay disease progression will require early intervention, before irreversible damage has occurred. The critical barrier that needs to be resolved to obtain more success in preventive interventions is to find a biomarker that does not measure end-stage pathology, but precedes Aβ and early tau pathology and can predict who is expected to show an increase in Alzheimer’s disease pathology and a decrease in cognition over the following years. Autopsy data reported deposition of hyperphosphorylated tau pathology in the locus coeruleus early in adulthood and before cortical involvement. This indicates that the locus coeruleus may be a promising early marker of risk of Alzheimer’s disease. During this talk, I will provide evidence from structural and functional in vivo imaging of the locus coeruleus supporting locus coeruleus imaging as potential marker of pre-preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.