Imaging of Amyloid-β in neurodegenerative diseases and review of the relationship with Cancer, Neurodegenerative diseases and Type II Diabetes
Open AccessAmyloid-β (Aβ) protein is significant when predicting diseases that affect the long-term health of the human body. Cancers, neurodegenerative diseases, and Type II Diabetes mellitus affect over 20% of the world population. Comorbid situations are clinically considered even more dangerous since there is no standard clinical treatment for any of these conditions. Even though recent articles have raised questions in the role of Aβ for neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's patients, there is no question about its presence and interaction in the pathophysiology of various patient groups. While it is not clear why or how Aβ is connected to these diseases, it has been established through multiple research groups that Aβ is present where the symptoms of these diseases are expressed. Aβ biology is complex, and its presence and expression for cancers are very different from its expression for various neurodegenerative disorders or Type II Diabetes. The molecular pathway and processing of Aβ are very complex, and not all pathology is established.In this thesis, I have reviewed the previous work on how Aβ is processed and how it interacts at a cellular level with various tissue types in the human body. The interaction has helped us understand the relevance of Aβ physiology and its connection to some of the most common cancer types, such as brain cancer, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, etc., along with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, ALS, etc. and Type II Diabetes. This review has established that while Amyloid-β is present at the disease site, it can also be a precursor to the cascade of disorders at other body sites. Currently, all applications for amyloid imaging for cancers and type 2 diabetes is either in vitro or ex vivo. The way to image Amyloid-β aggregates in vivo in the brain is using Amyloid PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans, which use F-18 or C-11-based radiopharmaceuticals. I have used Amyloid PET scans from the ADNI (Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative) and PPMI (Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative) to understand the difference between clinically normal subjects and patients afflicted with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. This has been accomplished by processing the images and extracting 2D shape descriptors and texture features. These features were used to create classifier and clustering models to identify the differences between clinically normal and diseased patients.
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