2024 PROGRAM and KEYNOTE RECORDINGS
The event was held at the James L. Knight Center located downtown Miami, FL at 400 SE 2nd Ave. Â
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 17
Sandra Sanabria Bohorquez, Genentech, South San Francisco, CA, US
Christopher Schwarz, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States
Pedro Rosa Neto, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Melissa Murray, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States
THURSDAY, JANUARY 18
Laetitia Lemoine, Invicro, London, United Kingdom
Gil Rabinovici, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States
Susan Landau, University of California, Berkeley, CA, United States
Heidi Jacobs, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
FRIDAY, JANUARY 19
Tommy Karikari, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA, United States
Keith Johnson, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
2024 GUEST LECTURES
JOHANNES ATTEMS
Dr. Johannes Attems’ research interest is neurodegenerative diseases of the ageing brain with a focus on clinico-neuropathological correlative studies. Despite the categorization of age associated neurodegenerative diseases into specific subtypes, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body diseases, it becomes more and more apparent that the ageing brain is characterized by the presence of multiple pathologies. Dr. Attems aims to evaluate the combined influence of these pathologies on the clinical syndrome as this might lead to the identification of new disease subtypes and thereby to the development of novel therapeutic strategies against age associated neurodegeneration.
Dr. Attems is Professor of Neuropathology at Newcastle University, Honorary Consultant Pathologist at Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle and Director of the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource. He is Editor in Chief of Acta Neuropathologica and leads the Neurodegenerative Pathology Research Group.
CATH MUMMERY
Dr. Cath Mummery has been a consultant neurologist since 2002 and leads the cognitive disorders service at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She is also Honorary Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University College London.
She studied medicine at UCH, trained in neurology at NHNN and Kings College Hospital, and gained a PhD in cognitive neurology at the Wellcome Department of Functional Imaging, UCL.
She is head of novel therapeutics at the Dementia Research Centre, UCL and has been senior investigator on over 20 early phase drug trials of disease modifying agents in dementias including genetic forms of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia.
She is deputy director for the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre at NHNN, a unit dedicated to early phase trials in neurodegeneration.
Dr. Mummery was elected to the executive of the Association of British neurologists as services chair in 2017 and also works closely with the Royal College of Physicians, sitting on the medical specialties board and chairing the joint clinical neurosciences committee. As deputy director of the NHSE Neurosciences Clinical Reference Group, she is closely involved in work to enhance neurology care for patients.
OSKAR HANSSON
Dr. Oskar Hansson gained his PhD in neurobiology in 2001 and his M.D. in 2005. He became senior consultant in neurology in 2012 at Skåne University Hospital, and full professor of neurology in 2017 at Lund University, Sweden.
Dr. Hansson performs internationally recognized clinical and translational research focusing on the early phases of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. His work on biomarkers has led to over 400 original peer-reviewed publications.
He heads the prospective and longitudinal Swedish BioFINDER studies (www.biofinder.se), where the research team focuses on the development of optimized diagnostic algorithms for early diagnosis, and also studies the consequences of different brain pathologies on cognitive, neurologic and psychiatric symptoms in healthy individuals and patients with dementia and parkinsonian disorders. Recently, the BioFINDER team has shown that Tau PET imaging can with high accuracy distinguish Alzheimer’s from all other neurodegenerative diseases (JAMA, 2018), predict cognitive decline in cognitively normal individuals (Nature Medicine, 2022), and to detect different subtypes of Alzheimer’s (Nature Medicine 2021).
Dr. Hansson has also developed and validated blood-based biomarkers for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (Nature Medicine, 2020; JAMA, 2020, Nature Aging 2021, Nature Medicine 2021, Nature Medicine 2022) and markers for Lewy body disease (Nature Medicine 2023, Nature Medicine 2023).
He is the co-director of the strategic research area of neuroscience at Lund University, and responsible for research at the Memory Clinic at Skåne University Hospital.
PAOLO ZANOTTI-FREGONARA
Paolo Zanotti Fregonara, MD, PhD, is a nuclear medicine physician who works as a Staff Scientist in the Molecular Imaging Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
Dr. Zanotti earned his MD degree from the University of Milan, Italy, and his PhD from the University of Paris, France. He has held clinical and academic positions in France and in the United States, as an Assistant and Associate Professor of Biophysics and Nuclear Medicine at the Universities of Paris and Bordeaux, and as the Director of the PET core at Houston Methodist Research Institute in Houston, Texas.
Dr. Zanotti specializes in PET kinetic modeling and dosimetry.
His kinetic modeling research focuses on the validation of new radioligands using animal models, in healthy volunteers, and in patients with brain or peripheral diseases. In particular, he has worked on the initial validation of inflammation radioligands for various targets such as TSPO, COX-1, and COX-2, the methodology for radioligand quantification, and subsequent clinical application in patients with neuropsychiatric diseases.
In dosimetry, his work led to the establishment of new standard values for fetal 18F-FDG dosimetry.
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KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
Regrettably, the live recording of Dr. Zanotti’s presentation was lost; Dr. Zanotti was most kind to re-record his presentation via zoom. Our many thanks to him!