Tau PET Imaging in Corticobasal Syndrome
Richard Tsai, MD, UCSF MAC
- Pet scans are useful in helping identify the underlying pathologic protein in dementia
- Inject a tracer that can track different proteins in your brain (attaches, gives off a signal, and you can see where that signal is in your brain)
- B-amyloid PET imaging has altered the diagnostic and clinical trials landscape in Alzheimer’s
- More and more new investigational drugs are targeting tau.
- F-AV-1451 development in Alzheimer’s
- Initially developed to study tau in Alzheimer’s
- Actually working well in identifying location and severity of Alzheimer’s disease tau
- The tau protein in CBD is different than Alzheimer’s tau
- Hard to predict what the underlying pathology is in CBD
- Can be associated with CBD, PSP, AD, TDP-42, and a mix of the above
- F-AV-1451 in Corticobasal syndrome
- 3 Different types coming up
- Different levels of protein build up
- Took all the scans for CBD patients, about half have PSP/tau pathology
- Can a tau pet measure how severe your disease is?
- Signal strength correlates with motor symptoms severity
- Does FAV1451 actually bind to CBD-tau?
- Not sure yet, but there have only been two patient studies
- Areas with high populations of tau seen in the autopsy are often associated with areas associated with CBS/CBD
- Trouble with nonspecific binding – not exactly sure what it’s binding to, so we can’t be sure that it is 100% accurate. There are a lot of nonspecific signals in neurodegenerative syndromes that are not expected to have tau
- More work needs to be done…
- More imaging needed in autopsy cases to be sure
- 3 Different types coming up