Subtyping Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease: Typical, Atypical, and Resilient

Dr. Mormino is an assistant professor of Neurology at Stanford University, and is currently serving on the Imaging Core Steering committee for the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center. She completed her PhD in Neuroscience at UC Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. William Jagust, where she performed some of the initial studies applying Amyloid PET with the tracer PIB to clinically normal older individuals. During her postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Reisa Sperling and Keith Johnson at Massachusetts General Hospital she used multimodal imaging techniques to understand longitudinal cognitive changes among individuals classified as preclinical AD. Although amyloid abnormalities are common among clinically normal older adults, and associated with elevated risk of future progression to clinical impairment, we remain unable to predict future risk at the individual participant level. Although group level effects related to amyloid status are present, trajectories of cognitive decline vary across individuals. In this talk, Dr. Mormino will highlight her tau PET work, which has emphasized more heterogeneity in the spatial patterns of tau PET uptake than expected. This pattern suggests that multiple subtypes exist within preclinical AD, and that these subtypes are likely associated with distinct risk profiles (typical, atypical, and resilient). Subtyping preclinical AD is critical for the design of prevention trials, as well as to establish a more complete understanding of mechanisms related to early AD processes.

For questions, contact vswarup@uci.edu and bmander@hs.uci.edu