Agneta Nordberg

This project aims to develop and characterize new brain and fluid biomarkers to increase our understanding of the cause of future cognitive impairment and allow   implication of new biomarkers in clinical praxis. AD has a long presymptomatic period where the amyloid plaques start to accumulate decades before clinical symptoms followed by tau deposition. The contribution of reactive astrogliosis in AD has until recently largely been overlooked but new observations suggest reactive astrogliosis to precede other AD pathological hallmarks.  Multiple forms of astrocytes stress the importance to characterize new astrocytic in AD continuum and their possible role in new drug treatment strategies. We plan to apply a translational approach using both in vitro and in vivo molecular brain imaging techniques visualizing multiple pathological and functional changes in AD and other non-AD dementia disorders.  We combine PET tracer techniques with measurement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), plasma biomarkers and cognition with aim to evaluate the clinical value  of new fluid biomarker in clinical setting but also   to  obtain a deeper  insight and  understanding regarding the  time course of brain reactive astrogliosis in relation to deposition of  tau in  brain  as well as  to perform in vitro imaging studies characterizing  the binding properties and regional brain localization of  new astroglia, tau and synaptic protein  tracers in AD as well as other neurodegenerative diseases.