# Disentangling specific and off-target signals in tau PET imaging

> **NIH NIH R21** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $90,345

## Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of tau aggregates plays an increasingly important
role in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other tauopathies, and has provided new
insights into the pathophysiology of these diseases. Promising tau radiotracers have been
developed, however they all suffer from important limitations due to off-target binding either in
brain regions directly implicated in the disease process or in adjacent regions. We propose to
develop a new approach based on factor analysis of dynamic sequences to remove the
contribution of this contaminating signal to the PET measurements. We expect our approach to
improve our ability to quantify small signal changes in tau aggregates in key brain regions, which
in turn should improve our ability to diagnose AD in early stages, to detect changes in longitudinal
studies and to monitor responses to future therapeutics. We will characterize the performance of
the proposed method in computer simulations and will evaluate the technique in experimental
measurements acquired in healthy controls, subjects with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and
AD patients.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11078400
- **Project number:** 7R21AG070714-03
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Nicolas Jean Guehl
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $90,345
- **Award type:** 7
- **Project period:** 2021-08-15 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11078400

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11078400, Disentangling specific and off-target signals in tau PET imaging (7R21AG070714-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11078400. Licensed CC0.

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