Seeing the brain at work during disease progression could unlock the path to more effective medications.
At Emory University, a team of researchers has secured nearly $10 million in federal funding to peer more deeply into the living brain — seeking to illuminate, in real time, how Alzheimer's disease and autism spectrum disorder take hold and progress. Using advanced PET imaging probes, they hope to transform the invisible mechanics of neurological suffering into something visible, measurable, and ultimately treatable. For the more than 10 million Americans navigating these conditions, this work represents not merely a scientific advance, but a renewed promise that understanding can precede relief.
- Alzheimer's and autism affect millions of Americans yet remain stubbornly resistant to treatment, in part because the brain's disease processes have been so difficult to observe directly.
- A $9.6 million federal investment over five years is now mobilizing a multidisciplinary team at Emory — spanning radiology, pharmacology, neurology, and psychiatry — to change that.
- The team is engineering novel PET imaging probes capable of capturing disease progression as it unfolds in living patients, from rodent models all the way to human clinical studies.
- Emory's new Health Sciences Research Building II provides the infrastructure backbone, while the institution's prior breakthroughs in cancer imaging lend credibility to the ambition.
- If the probes succeed, they could compress the timeline for drug discovery and give clinicians sharper tools for navigating treatment decisions in some of medicine's most complex cases.
Emory University researchers have secured $9.6 million in federal grants — distributed over five years through the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health — to develop advanced PET imaging probes capable of revealing how Alzheimer's disease and autism spectrum disorder damage the brain in real time. For the more than 10 million Americans living with these conditions, both of which remain poorly understood and difficult to treat, the potential is significant: seeing disease progression as it happens could open new pathways to more effective medications.
The effort is anchored in two new initiatives within Emory's Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences — the Positron Emission Tomography Imaging Center and the Radiopharmaceutical Discovery Program. Principal investigator Steven Liang leads a genuinely multidisciplinary team that includes pharmacologists, neurologists, and psychiatry researchers, among them Allan Levey, director of the Goizueta Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and Larry Young, who directs the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience. The research spans the full arc from basic science to clinical application, moving through rodent models, nonhuman primates, and ultimately human studies.
The work will be conducted in Emory's new Health Sciences Research Building II, equipped with imaging infrastructure that university leadership views as essential to translating laboratory discoveries into patient care. Emory's history of imaging innovation — including breakthroughs in prostate cancer detection and radiotracer-guided treatment — provides a strong foundation. Researchers and administrators alike see the Alzheimer's and autism imaging program as the next chapter in that tradition, one that could reshape how clinicians understand and treat two of the most complex conditions in modern medicine.
Emory University researchers have secured nearly $10 million in federal funding to build a new window into how Alzheimer's disease and autism spectrum disorder damage the brain in real time. The money—$9.6 million distributed over five years through grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Mental Health—will support the development of advanced PET imaging probes designed to reveal the actual mechanics of disease progression as it unfolds in living patients. For the more than 10 million Americans currently living with these conditions, the stakes are high. Both diseases remain poorly understood and difficult to treat, and researchers believe that seeing the brain at work during disease progression could unlock the path to more effective medications.
The work centers on two new research initiatives housed in Emory's Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences: the Positron Emission Tomography Imaging Center and the Radiopharmaceutical Discovery Program. Steven Liang, an associate professor in radiology and the principal investigator on the grants, frames the ambition plainly. The team aims to use next-level PET imaging technology to advance understanding of both Alzheimer's and autism while accelerating the pace of clinical investigation and drug discovery. The research is genuinely multidisciplinary. Collaborators include Stephen Traynelis and Hongjie Yuan from the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Allan Levey, the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Neurology and director of the Goizueta Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, and Larry Young, a psychiatry professor who directs the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience at Emory's National Primate Research Center.
Elizabeth Krupinski, vice chair for research in the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, calls the work potentially game-changing. Liang's projects span the full arc of modern biomedical research: drug discovery, radiochemistry, and translational PET imaging studies conducted across multiple species, from rodents to nonhuman primates to humans. This progression from bench to bedside—from basic science to clinical application—is precisely what the research is designed to accomplish. The work will take place in Emory's new Health Sciences Research Building II, equipped with the Center of Systems Imaging Core, infrastructure that Vikas Sukhatme, dean of Emory School of Medicine, sees as essential to translating basic discoveries into improvements in patient care.
Emory's track record in advanced imaging innovation provides solid ground for this ambition. The institution has pioneered imaging theragnostics for prostate cancer, discovered imaging agents capable of detecting cancer recurrence, and led clinical trials demonstrating how radiotracer imaging can guide treatment decisions for patients with recurring prostate cancer. Amit Saindane, chair of the Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences, sees the Alzheimer's and autism work as the next frontier in that same tradition. The novel PET imaging tools being developed show genuine promise for deepening understanding of these devastating neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental diseases. If successful, these tools could accelerate the testing of new neurotherapeutics and reshape how clinicians approach treatment decisions for patients with some of the most complex conditions in medicine.
Citações Notáveis
This work has the potential to be game-changing. Dr. Liang's projects involve drug discovery, radiochemistry, and translational PET imaging studies in multiple species.— Elizabeth Krupinski, vice chair for research, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences
These projects are great examples of Emory's expertise in bench-to-bedside translational research, research with substantial potential for improving patient care.— Vikas Sukhatme, dean of Emory School of Medicine
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does seeing the brain in real time matter so much for Alzheimer's and autism? Can't we already diagnose these conditions?
We can diagnose them, yes, but mostly after damage has already occurred. What these PET probes do is show us the actual molecular changes happening during disease progression—the specific proteins accumulating, the neural circuits misfiring. That's the difference between knowing someone has the disease and understanding why it's happening.
So this is really about drug discovery, then. Better imaging leads to better targets for treatment.
Exactly. Right now, developing drugs for these conditions is like trying to hit a target in the dark. You're testing compounds and hoping they work. With real-time imaging of disease mechanisms, researchers can see whether a drug candidate is actually affecting the underlying biology. That changes the speed and success rate of drug development.
The grant spans five years and multiple institutions. How does that collaboration actually work in practice?
It's structured around the fact that no single department has all the expertise. Radiology brings the imaging technology, pharmacology brings the chemistry, neurology brings the clinical knowledge of Alzheimer's, psychiatry brings understanding of autism. They're literally in the same building now, which matters more than it sounds.
What's the realistic timeline before patients actually benefit from this?
That's the honest question. The probes themselves might be ready for human testing within a few years. But translating that into new treatments—that's a longer arc. The imaging is the foundation. It accelerates everything downstream, but it's not a direct path to a cure.
Why autism and Alzheimer's together? They seem like completely different problems.
They are different diseases, but the research infrastructure is the same. Both involve brain dysfunction that's hard to visualize and hard to treat. Both affect millions of people. And there's a practical reason: the same PET imaging platform can be adapted for different molecular targets. It's efficient science.