# Development of selective amyloid-responsive fluorescent probes

> **NIH NIH RF1** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2022 · $1,934,347

## Abstract

Project Summary
 Amyloid accumulation in the brain is a universal feature of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and many other related
dementias and precedes clinical symptoms by several years. Methods for antemortem detection of amyloid
species may, therefore, aid in diagnosing and monitoring neurodegeneration, providing critical information that
can be used to devise a proper plan for patient management. While a number of clinical tools for detecting
amyloid in the brain or cerebral spinal fluid have been developed to help diagnose AD, methods to differentiate
AD from non-AD neuropathology in living patients are limited. We have recently developed two new families of
fluorescent probes that can selectively detect aggregated forms of tau or alpha-synuclein, which could address an
unmet need by extending the available toolbox for aiding in detection of amyloid or amyloid-like aggregates
associated with non-AD diseases such as Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and other
tauopathies and synucleinopathies. The proposed research seeks to uncover new and reliable design principles
for developing such selective amyloid-responsive probes and will seek to evaluate their utility for detection of
amyloid species in emerging platforms for antemortem diagnostics. The Specific Aims of this proposal are to:
1) Develop fluorescent probes that exhibit selective enhancement of fluorescence upon binding to aggregated
alpha-synuclein or tau versus ABeta in solution and in tissue; 2) Develop a method to characterize the distribution of
aggregates of amyloidogenic proteins in biofluids; and 3) Evaluate whether selective amyloid-responsive
fluorescent probes can be used to image specific amyloid deposits in the retina.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10467922
- **Project number:** 1RF1AG077802-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Jerry Yang
- **Activity code:** RF1 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $1,934,347
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-06-01 → 2025-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10467922

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10467922, Development of selective amyloid-responsive fluorescent probes (1RF1AG077802-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10467922. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*