A Noradrenergic Marker for the Early Detection and Personalized Treatment of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases

The aim of this project is to identify the alterations in the major source of noradrenaline in the brain, the locus coeruleus, and establish whether these alterations can detect Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease at an early stage.

We will use a non-invasive technique called magnetization transfer ratio to measure the locus coeruleus in four different cohorts.

Our results will establish whether changes in the locus coeruleus precede abnormalities in cerebrospinal fluid, plasma and imaging markers in the course of these neurodegenerative diseases.

Moreover, we will establish whether different subregions within the locus coeruleus can predict different clinical symptoms and clinical trajectories, being useful to create a precision medicine approach that takes into account individual patient characteristics.

Finally, we will use the locus coeruleus as an outcome measure in current multi-domain clinical trials to identify patients that are most likely to benefit from treatment.

This will also allow us to obtain information on how new preventive therapies might be created to boost the neuroprotective functions of the locus coeruleus against pathological protein accumulation.

We are confident that we can achieve these aims in a timely manner due to our excellent team of experts and our access to all the necessary equipment and a unique infrastructure that will allow a fast translation of our findings to clinical trials.