Amyloid imaging: the court of public opinion

Abstract

Human amyloid imaging is one of the great recent translational medicine stories. Beginning with the recognition that Thioflavin T derivatives could be used as PET tracers, through development of Pittsburgh compound B, to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of Florbetapir in 2012, human amyloid imaging has held great promise to allow in vivo inclusive diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD), even though the first principle of amyloid PET is that it functions as a surrogate for β-amyloid pathology, and not necessarily as a surrogate for the diagnosis of AD.(1,2.)