Identifying New Memory and Brain Markers for Early Alzheimer's Disease

This project aims to identify new cognitive and neuroimaging markers associated with early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, which can identify different disease stages and subtypes.

Despite newly available treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, dementia subtype specificity is important to determine prior to treatment to ensure safe and efficacious outcomes. Optimized cognitive assessments and imaging biomarkers are also essential for early detection and to monitor disease progression.

This project will address these challenges by developing new cognitive and neural markers sensitive to the early effects of Alzheimer’s. These markers can be used to screen for subtle memory changes, classify by subtype, and identify signatures of healthy brain function that can clarify mechanisms of disease-modifying effects on memory in early-phase clinical trials.

The DELCODE study of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases is the only one worldwide that can disentangle longitudinal effects of Alzheimer’s disease on two memory networks which are differentially affected by early tau and amyloid. It uses memory tasks that were optimised to tap into these networks and which are superior to standard clinical tests as specific markers. The novel modelling procedures I will use can identify disease subtypes and estimate the time between subsequent abnormal biomarker changes to determine the utility of the new markers to index intervention windows.

Insights gained from this project will provide stage- and subtype-specific cognitive and neural markers which can help researchers and clinicians to screen for individuals at an early disease stage, stratify them into subgroups, provide a time estimate for a window of opportunity for intervention prior to irreversible atrophy, identify functional brain markers to index disease-modifying effects to be used for proof-of-concept in early phase drug trials, and monitor progression and treatment response with precise cognitive markers which could in the future be used for digital remote assessment.