Abstract
A sensitive, specific, and objective test for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is urgently needed for efficient drug development and effective clinical use of emerging AD therapies. The present absence of AD diagnostic technology is the major impediment to clinical introduction of new AD treatments. This situation is troubling given the hundreds of AD treatments now in the pharmaceutical pipeline. Enabling diagnostic technology will accelerate preclinical drug discovery, streamline clinical testing, and facilitate therapeutic intervention. Patient care will be enhanced by an objective means to assess AD risk, establish early diagnosis/prognosis, monitor disease progression, and determine response to treatment. We recently discovered β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides, AD-associated β-amyloid pathology, and unusual co-localizing equatorial supranuclear cataracts in the ocular lenses of patients with AD but not in those without the disorder [1]. These discoveries provide the first evidence of AD-associated β-amyloid pathology outside the brain and support a direct molecular link between AD pathology in the brain and lens. Our findings led us to develop novel, non-invasive laser optical technology for quantitative in vivo detection and monitoring of AD-associated β-amyloid pathology in human patients and transgenic mice.
© 2005 Optical Society of America
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