Siemens Medical Solutions announced today that it will begin clinical trials on what could be a breakthrough imaging biomarker that the company hopes could identify Alzheimer’s disease prior to the onset of noticeable symptoms.
Siemens will collaborate with leading Alzheimer’s researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles to launch a Phase I, open label, single-center safety study of one of the first imaging biomarkers designed to identify Alzheimer’s disease pathology specifically. The study will employ a diagnostic technique developed by UCLA researchers that combines the new imaging biomarker and positron emission tomography.
The study protocol will focus on the use of the biomarker in patient populations and its potential to seek out tangles and plaques in the living brain of Alzheimer’s disease patients. Using PET imaging, biomarker molecules are considered to have the potential to “light up” the parts of the brain with high concentrations of the imaging biomarker; through analysis of the PET data, researchers can thus identify the disease specifically, and do so in advance of the onset of symptoms.
July 25, 2024 
