Lessons Learned from the 22nd Annual MCI Symposium

The 22nd Annual MCI Symposium took place last Friday – in the virtual meeting space.  This conference first started in Miami, hosted by the Wein Center for Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders in 2003, and has been a wonderful, smaller conference with world-class researchers and practitioners from around the globe presenting on the most recent science in an approachable venue. I first travelled to Miami from Rochester, Minnesota in either 2005 or 2006 for this conference, and I’ve attended at least 10 times, maybe more. I guess I've been enough that you can see me sitting in the audience in their conference homepage picture!  (It's the back of my head at the bottom right next to my bearded colleague.) While I definitely missed going to Miami and seeing everyone this year with it being virtual-only, you can’t beat the convenience of a virtual conference!

While in the past the conference has had presentations on a wide variety of etiologies (the diseases causing the MCI), this year was very Alzheimer’s Disease-centric. This is not surprising given the huge growth in the science in AD the last few years and the push to identify AD in the MCI or earlier phases of the disease. There were two main themes to this year’s conference:  1) the use of plasma biomarkers in diagnosis and 2) lessons learned in the first year+ of anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies.

The term “plasma biomarkers” relates to the new developments in identifying AD from a blood sample.  Of course, this is very desirable given how much easier it usually is to give a blood sample rather than have to do a lumbar puncture for cerebrospinal fluid or specialized neuroimaging.  A lot of great information was presented last year at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference as to the growing accuracy of identifying amyloid biomarkers (the plaques part of AD) in the blood.  We heard more about this, but also about tau (the tangles part of AD) plasma biomarkers. This is highly important, as it gives us a more complete picture of the disease process a person may be experiencing, as the hallmarks of AD are plaques AND tangles. Discussions focused on the quickly growing accuracy of these blood tests, how that accuracy holds up across ethnically diverse samples (pretty good so far), and thoughts of using these blood tests as a “screening” to see who would benefit from going on to other procedures like tau or amyloid neuroimaging.  This strategy could potentially save patients from unecessary procedures or costs.  Of course, these blood tests are still in the research phase, but we are getting closer to a point where I think we will see them clinically in the next few years.

The biggest news on the AD front of the last decade (or more) has been the start of disease modifying treatments via “anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies” or the infusion treatments we have spoken about before for treating amyloid in the brain.  Discussions focused on the establishment of guidelines of selecting appropriate patients for treatment (what do you need to qualify for treatment, and what disqualifies you from treatment), lessons learned of when it went well (or did not), and debate about when to follow strict guidelines, and when to use clinical judgment to offer the treatment to patients.  The latter is just the kind of conversation that this conference is good at:  a space where top-notch clinicians from medical centers around the world discuss cases and when and when not it may be appropriate to treat with anti-amyloid therapies.  These types of conversations will help clinicians get better at helping the right patients with the right treatments.

We in the HABIT Program strive to stay on top of the latest information in the MCI and neurodegenerative disease space to pass on to you.  This Symposium always has two parts:  a day for scientists/clinicians to discuss with each other and a "Public Forum" day, where they present much of the same information in more "plain talk" for the lay audience.  This year that Public Forum takes place on April 26th - VIRTUALLY ONLY.  You can find the link to register below:

Forum-2024 | MCI Symposium

Let us know if you attend, and what you think!