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Tau PET Imaging in Alzheimer’s Disease

  • Neuroimaging (DJ Brooks, Section Editor)
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Abstract

In several neurodegenerative diseases that are collectively called tauopathies, progressive accumulation of tau in the brain is closely associated with neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment. Noninvasive detection of tau protein deposits in the brain would be useful to diagnose tauopathies as well as to track and predict disease progression. Recently, several tau PET tracers including T807, THK-5117, and PBB3 have been developed and succeeded in imaging neurofibrillary pathology in vivo. For use of tau PET as a biomarker of tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease, PET tracers should have high affinity to PHF-tau and high selectivity for tau over amyloid-β and other protein deposits. PET tau imaging enables the longitudinal assessment of the spatial pattern of tau deposition and its relation to amyloid-β pathology and neurodegeneration. This technology could also be applied to the pharmacological assessment of anti-tau therapy, thereby allowing preventive interventions.

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Conflict of Interest

Ryuichi Harada, Hiroyuki Arai, and Kazuhiko Yanai declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Nobuyuki Okamura, Shozo Furumoto, and Yukitsuka Kudo were funded by a grant to study tau PET imaging from GE Healthcare, the SEI (Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.) Group, CSR Foundation, Health and Labor Sciences Research Grants from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare of Japan, and Grant-in-Aid for Exploratory Research (25670524) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

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This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, 2-1, Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 9808575, Japan

    Nobuyuki Okamura & Kazuhiko Yanai

  2. Division of Neuro-imaging, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, 4-1, Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 9808575, Japan

    Nobuyuki Okamura, Ryuichi Harada & Yukitsuka Kudo

  3. Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Science, Tohoku University, 6-3, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 9808578, Japan

    Shozo Furumoto

  4. Cyclotron and Radioisotope Center, Tohoku University, 6-3, Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 9808578, Japan

    Shozo Furumoto

  5. Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer, Tohoku University, 4-1, Seiryo-machi, Aoba-ku, Sendai, 9808575, Japan

    Hiroyuki Arai

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  1. Nobuyuki Okamura
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  2. Ryuichi Harada
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Correspondence to Nobuyuki Okamura.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Neuroimaging

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Okamura, N., Harada, R., Furumoto, S. et al. Tau PET Imaging in Alzheimer’s Disease. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep 14, 500 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-014-0500-6

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