Pioneering Alzheimer's Study in Colombia Zeroes in on Enigmatic Protein

Researchers at the University of Antioquia in Colombia will take brain scans of persons with Alzheimer's to track the tau protein and see if monitoring its formation in real time could reveal the role it plays in the disease, reports Nature . The team has already performed a preliminary imaging study in which 24 people from the same Colombian family had their brains scanned with positron-emission tomography to look for tau. The results indicated for the first time that tau starts accumulating in the brains of people with a mutation unique to Antioquia six years before symptoms start manifesting. Each participant in the new study will receive infusions of crenezumab or a placebo every other week for five years, while their cognitive abilities also will be assessed, and their brains scanned for amyloid, blood proteins, and other biomarkers that could be early Alzheimer's indicators. The researchers want to determine how tau spreads through the brains of young people with Alzheimer's, and whether that pattern reflects the distribution of tau seen in seniors with the disorder. They aim to compare their results with data from two clinical trials of anti-amyloid drugs in the United States that have started scanning participants' brains for tau. Should the study have promising results, the researchers might administer crenezumab to people younger than 30 who carry the mutation for early-onset Alzheimer's.