The Alzheimer's Association has awarded its largest research grant—nearly $4.2 million over four years—to the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network-Therapeutic Trials Unit, based at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, to enable the program to move forward with drug and biomarker trials in people with genetically based, young-onset Alzheimer's disease.

18F-FDG PET may provide a quantitative measure to detect progression from mild cognitive impairment (MCI) to Alzheimer's disease (AD), and could offer a mechanism to streamline clinical trials, according to a study published in this month's Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Individuals with deterministic genes in whom it is known that Alzheimer’s disease (AD) will develop appear to show differences in beta-amyloid distribution when compared with non-dominantly inherited AD patients, helping to consolidate evidence that PET and MRI can depict brain changes well before the arrival of AD-related symptoms, according to preliminary findings presented July 20 at the 2011 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Paris.