Probing the brain for answers: a PET tracer for early Alzheimer’s diagnosis

Amyloid and tau fibrils are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, and these are what existing positron emission tomography (PET) imaging tracers are targeting. However, once these proteins have reached this aggregated stage, the neurodegenerative disease is more difficult to treat. That’s why we need tracers that can identify earlier molecular signs of Alzheimer’s disease.  Yanyan Zhao (left) is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge (UK). After completing her PhD at the China Agricultural University (Beijing, China), she began her postdoc in 2014, where she has been working in the Molecular Imaging Chemistry Laboratory. Here, she uses fluorescent techniques to...