[S-48] Symposium 48
State-of-the-art basic research for Alzheimer's disease

[S-48-1] Uncovering molecular etiology of dementia through nonclinical developments of therapeutics

^○Makoto Higuchi (National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Japan)

In recent years, many clinical trials for Alzheimer's disease (AD) have ended in disappointment. Now it's time to rethink strategy to defeat AD. In this symposium, researchers at the vanguard of AD basic research will introduce their recent remarkable work, including elucidation of AD pathomechanisms, generation of AD animal models, and establishing new concepts of therapies and biomarkers utilizing cutting-edge technologies. We believe that talk in this session will provide neurologists important insights to gain a better understanding of AD.

Makoto Higuchi is a geriatrician/neuroscientist by training. He performed nuclear medicine research including clinical PET imaging in 1993-1997, and was awarded the PhD in medicine at Tohoku University. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Geriatrics at Tohoku University in 1999, and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Pennsylvania in 1999-2003. In 2003, he became Staff Scientist at RIKEN Brain Science Institute. He was appointed Team Leader at National Institute of Radiological Sciences in 2005, and Department Head in National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology in 2019. Higuchi's primary focus is translational molecular imaging research on Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diverse other neuropsychiatric diseases bidirectionally connecting animal models and humans. His research accomplishments are represented by the development of imaging agents for pathological tau protein deposits in neurodegenerative disorders.