Automated Imaging Reveals Where TAU Protein Originates in the Brain in Alzheimer's Disease

A study in Science Translational Medicine details how researchers developed an automated method that can track the development of harmful tau protein clumps related to Alzheimer's disease in the brain, reports EurekAlert . The authors determined that tau primarily manifested in the rhinal cortex before spreading elsewhere, suggesting that targeting the protein there could potentially retard disease progression. Massachusetts General Hospital's Justin Sanchez and colleagues developed an automated anatomic sampling method that uses positron emission tomography imaging to monitor tau in the brains of 443 adult participants, including 55 with Alzheimer's. They learned that tau accrual first emerged in the rhinal cortex independently from amyloid-beta before expanding to the temporal neocortex. A two-year trial with 104 subjects indicated that people with the highest initial levels of tau or amyloid-beta showed the most tau proliferation throughout the brain by the study's conclusion. "These findings suggest that the rhinal cortex is a biomarker of downstream tau spread . . . with potential utility for therapeutic trials in which reduction of tau spread is an outcome measure," the authors said.