Current and future prospects for tau imaging

Nobuyuki Okamura¹⁾, Ryuichi Harada²⁾, Aiko Ishiki³⁾, Kazuhiko Yanai²⁾⁴⁾, Hiroyuki Arai³⁾, Yukitsuka Kudo³⁾

¹⁾Division of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University
²⁾Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University School of Medicine
³⁾Department of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Institute of Development, Aging, and Cancer, Tohoku University
⁴⁾Cyclotron and Radioisotope Center, Tohoku University

Progressive accumulation of amyloid-β and tau proteins is involved in the development of Alzheimer's disease. Recent progress in the development of PET radiotracers has enabled the visualization of these protein aggregates in the living brain. Amyloid PET became increasingly essential in the clinical trial of anti-dementia drugs. In recent years, tau PET tracers have also been successfully developed and applied to human studies. However, recent studies suggest the existence of off-target binding in the images of the first generation tau PET tracers. In this review, we would like to share some lessons that we learned from our experiences in the development of PET tracers.

Address correspondence to Dr. Nobuyuki Okamura, Division of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University (4-4-1 Komatsushima, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 981-8558, Japan)