Impact of amyloid imaging on drug development in Alzheimer's disease

Imaging agents capable of assessing amyloid-beta (Abeta) content in vivo in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects likely will be important as diagnostic agents to detect Abeta plaques in the brain as well as to help test the amyloid cascade hypothesis of AD and as an aid to assess the efficacy of anti-amyloid therapeutics currently under development and in clinical trials. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging studies of amyloid deposition in human subjects with several Abeta imaging agents are currently underway. We reported the first PET studies of the carbon 11-labeled thioflavin-T derivative Pittsburgh Compound B in 2004, and this work has subsequently been extended to include a variety of subject groups, including AD patients, mild cognitive impairment patients and healthy controls. The ability to quantify regional Abeta plaque load in the brains of living human subjects has provided a means to begin to apply this technology as a diagnostic agent to detect regional concentrations of Abeta plaques and as a surrogate marker of therapeutic efficacy in anti-amyloid drug trials.