Faculty from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have teamed up with NeuroXT, a software company focused on neurodegenerative disease treatments, to advance the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The collaborators are hoping to develop precision medicine approaches to AD treatment in older people by learning more about how brain MRIs can be analyzed to a patient’s response to treatment, concerning effectiveness and side effects.
Johns Hopkins researchers Kenichi Oishi, MD, PhD, and Constantine G. Lyketsos, MD, MHS at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, have been esteemed collaborators since 2009. Their work has yielded groundbreaking advancements, such as discovering novel imaging markers for Alzheimer’s disease and developing innovative models that predict disease progression from imaging data. Recently, they introduced a systematic approach to identify individuals at high risk for dementia and predict drug effects using data from electronic medical records and brain MRIs acquired in clinical settings, establishing precision medicine in dementia practice.
Jun-Kyung Seong, PhD, the principal investigator from NeuroXT, believes that combining NeuroXT’s AI technology with Johns Hopkins neuroimaging can revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr. Oishi, professor of Radiology and Neurology, leads brain MRI research at the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Alzheimer’s Disease. He is internationally renowned for developing electronic brain atlases, widely utilized in neuroimaging research, and conducting real-world clinical data analysis with artificial intelligence for precision medicine in older people. Dr. Lyketsos directs the Richman Family Precision Medicine Center of Excellence in Alzheimer’s Disease and Johns Hopkins’ Memory and Alzheimer’s Treatment Center. He is a world expert in the care and treatment of patients with AD and related dementias, developing biomarkers to accelerate treatment development for AD while designing and implementing innovative clinical trials.
The researchers are hoping this research will result in a significant step towards personalized medicine in the battle against AD, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that currently affects 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and older. AD is most commonly associated with cognitive deficits and memory decline and is primarily caused by the accumulation of proteins called amyloid and tau in the brain, which leads to the degeneration of neurons and the onset of dementia.
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