Detecting Alzheimer's disease before it's too late

Alzheimer's disease can begin decades before symptoms like memory loss appear. But diagnosis often comes too late, long after the brain is irreversibly damaged.

With 13 million Americans projected to have Alzheimer’s by 2050, Daniel Martínez-Pérez wants to change that. He studies a biomarker that could advance noninvasive, cost-effective methods to detect Alzheimer’s at its earliest stages and help slow or stall cognitive decline.

Part of renowned neurotoxicologist Tomás R. Guilarte’s brain health research group, Martínez-Pérez published findings in Acta Neuropathologica showing that TSPO (translocator protein 18 kDa) is linked to disease progression and may be both an early biomarker and a therapeutic target.

Using advanced imaging software, he pinpointed where and when TSPO first rises in the brain: in the subiculum, a part of the hippocampus. It happens as early as six weeks in a mouse model — roughly equivalent to 18–20 years of age in humans — and five months before cognitive decline.

TSPO concentrations were highest in microglia, the brain’s immune cells, clustered near amyloid plaques. This same pattern was observed in brain tissue from members of the world’s largest group with earlyonset familial Alzheimer’s in Antioquia, Colombia.

Martínez-Pérez is currently investigating if blocking TSPO halts disease progression and how it’s expressed at the different stages of Alzheimer’s. His ultimate goal is to develop a blood-based test as an additional diagnostic tool.