Congratulations! Our lab members Dr. Guoyu Lan, visiting student Mengjie Wang, and master student Laihong Zhang published their new work "comprehensive evaluation of plasma tau biomarkers for detecting and monitoring Alzheimer's disease in a multicenter and multiethnic aging population" in Nature Aging. More information please refer to https://www.nature.com/articles/s43587-025-00904-3.

Abstract: Over 20% of patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) worldwide are Chinese, although the efficacy of existing blood-based measures of AD biomarkers is largely unknown in Asian cohorts. Here we explored how plasma tau biomarkers correlated with cross-sectional and longitudinal AD-related outcomes and their diagnostic performance in 1,085 participants from three independent studies, including two Chinese cohorts, Greater-Bay-Area Healthy Aging Brain Study (n = 425) and Huashan (n = 297), and the North American Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative cohort (n = 363). Plasma p-tau217 performed best in classifying Aβ-positron emission tomography (PET) and tau-PET positivity throughout the AD continuum and correlated with all AD-related outcomes. A two-cutoff approach suggested that participants with intermediate plasma p-tau217 levels experienced rapid accumulation of Aβ-PET and entorhinal tau-PET, as well as accelerated hypometabolism and cognitive decline. Increased plasma p-tau217 was also associated with rapid longitudinal changes in Aβ-PET, tau-PET and neurodegeneration. These results suggest that plasma p-tau217 is superior in detecting multiple aspects of AD-related pathological changes and tracking disease progression.