A new paradigm for testing AD drugs - neuroimaging biomarkers as surrogate outcomes homologous in animals and humans

The pathological process of Alzheimer's disease (AD) starts years before the appearance of clinical symptoms. The understanding of those mechanisms at the basis of such long phase will permit the development of new drugs to counter neurodegeneration before irreversible neuronal losses occur. Ideally, the development of such drugs should be based on the markers of disease progression homologous in humans and animals. The perfect experimental model recapitulating the main pathological characteristics of AD has yet to be engineered, but available models address a number of pathological AD features allowing to translate human markers to mice. The present paper is an overview of the neuroimaging markers used to map AD-like pathology and its progression in vivo in mice models of amyloidosis. Mice models are widely used to test AD candidate drugs and to predict their effects in human. Therefore, the crucial key is the identification of AD progression imaging markers homologous to those validated in early AD patients.