Neurodegenerative Diseases

Background

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the first cause of dementias in people over the age of 65. This disease continuously evolves, from a preclinical form without any apparent symptoms to a disease that may be characterized by memory tests and various biological tests. Early clinical cognitive investigations can detect patients at risk, but not assert that the disease will start and when it will. The development of new therapeutic strategies requires diagnostic methods for earlier detection and monitoring of neurodegenerative signs in the at-risk population.

Objectives

The neurodegenerative disease theme developed within the LRB aims to produce a new radiotracer to improve the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in nuclear imaging, by quantifying and mapping the early toxic pathological forms of the Tau protein in the brain of patients selected as at risk in prior cognitive testing. This radioligand would be a useful and innovative diagnostic tool that would allow the efficacy evaluation of therapies directed against the pathological forms of Tau currently under development.

Publications

Pansieri, J., M. A. Halim, C. Vendrely, M. Dumoulin, F. Legrand, M. Moulin Sallanon, S. Chierici, S. Denti, X. Dagany, P. Dugourd, et al., "Mass and charge distributions of amyloid fibers involved in neurodegenerative diseases: mapping heterogeneity and polymorphism", Chemical science, vol. 9, pp. 2791–2796, 2018.

Virgone-Carlotta, A., E. Dufour, S. Bacot, M. Ahmadi, M. Cornou, L. Moni, J. Garcia, S. Chierici, D. Garin, D. Marti-Batlle, et al., "New diketopiperazines as vectors for peptide protection and brain delivery: Synthesis and biological evaluation", Journal of Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals, vol. 59, pp. 517–530, 2016.

Garin, D., A. Virgone-Carlotta, B. Gözel, F. Oukhatar, P. Perret, D. le Marti-Battle, M. Touret, P. Millet, M. Dubois-Dauphin, D. Meyronet, et al., "COB231 targets amyloid plaques in post-mortem human brain tissue and in an Alzheimer mouse model", Journal of neurochemistry, vol. 132, pp. 609–618, 2015.

Tsartsalis, S., M. Moulin-Sallanon, N. Dumas, B. B. Tournier, N. Ginovart, and P. Millet, "A modified simplified reference tissue model for the quantification of dopamine D2/3 receptors with [18F] Fallypride images", Molecular imaging, vol. 13, pp. 7290–2014, 2014.