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Acting Director, Dept. of Nuclear Medicine, LMU Munich
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Keywords: PET, amyloid, tau, neuroinflammation
Research methods: PET autoradiography scRadiotracing immunohistochemistry SPECT
Brief research description: The research group works on molecular imaging of neurodegenerative diseases of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich). The group includes two physicians, one PhD student, two veterinarian, two technicians as well as seven clinical and eight preclinical medical doctoral students. The principal research focus is located in translational molecular neuroimaging by PET in neurodegenerative disorders, aiming to disentangle associations between protein aggregation and neuroinflammation. Since the beginning of our group, we published preclinical studies, i.e. one of the first methodological evaluations of amyloid PET in dedicated mouse models that focused on validation and establishment of novel PET tracer in the field and clinical studies using the same radiotracers. One current major focus is dedicated to single cell analysis after radiotracer injection (i.e. scRadiotracing) to disentangle cellular sources of PET signals. Moreover, we focus on multi-center studies, i.e. using second generation tau-PET in progressive supranuclear palsy. These preclinical and clinical efforts aim to integrate ATN biomarkers together with novel neuroinflammation PET biomarkers into current research frameworks.
Current GSN PhD students: Tim Bathe
Selected publications:
Xiang, X. … Haass, C.*; Brendel, M*. Microglial activation states drive glucose uptake and FDG-PET alterations in neurodegenerative diseases. Science Translational Medicine. 2021, 13(615):eabe5640. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abe564
Franzmeier, N.*; Brendel, M.* … Höglinger, G.U.*; Ewers, M*. Tau deposition patterns are associated with functional connectivity in primary tauopathies – evidence from tau-PET and histopathology. Nature Communications. 2022, 13(1):1362. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-28896-3
van Lengerich, B. … Brendel, M.; Sanchez, P.; Monroe, K. A TREM2-activating antibody with a blood-brain barrier transport vehicle enhances microglial metabolism in Alzheimer’s disease models. Nature Neuroscience. 2023, 26(3):416-429. doi: 10.1038/s41593-022-01240-0
Brendel, M.*; Barthel, H.*; van Eimeren, T.* … Sabri, O. Assessment of 18F-PI-2620 as a Biomarker in Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.” JAMA Neurology. 2020, 77(11):1408-1419. doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2020.2526
Brendel, M. … Rominger, A. Amyloid-PET predicts inhibition of de novo plaque formation upon chronic gamma-secretase modulator treatment. Molecular Psychiatry. 2015, 20(10):1179-87. doi: 10.1038/mp.2015.74