PET Radioligands for Imaging of Tau Pathology: Current Status

The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, continues to soar with the rapid growth of the elderly population, thus creating an enormous social and economic burden. Although disease-modifying drugs to treat AD are not yet available, several candidate drugs are in clinical trials. Most of these drugs are expected to be effective at the early stages of the disease, and therefore the early and accurate diagnosis of AD will be a critical factor in efforts to improve the prognosis of patients with AD. This review focuses on lead radioligands developed to date and their preclinical data in order to facilitate the development of tau-specific positron emission tomography radioligands that are of great interest to the scientific community. © 2015, Korean Society of Nuclear Medicine.