About the presentation: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is increasingly recognized as a heterogeneous disorder in which vascular injury and inflammation can interact with classical AD pathologies to accelerate cognitive decline. In this talk, Dr. Ottoy will explore how vascular brain disease and brain inflammation contribute to AD progression.  She will talk about biomarkers of white matter injury, cerebral blood flow, and brain network vulnerability. Using multimodal neuroimaging approaches, including PET and MRI, she will discuss how vascular and inflammatory biomarkers can help clarify the complex mechanisms underlying mixed dementia. Dr. Ottoy will also discuss ongoing work aimed at identifying early-stage biomarkers for cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

About the Speaker: Dr. Julie Ottoy is a Scientist and Assistant Professor at the Sunnybrook Research Institute and the University of Toronto. She received her PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, followed by postdoctoral training at McGill University and the University of Toronto in Canada. During her PhD, she developed expertise in quantitative PET imaging of amyloid, cerebral blood flow, and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her postdoctoral work expanded this focus to MRI-derived biomarkers for AD and the intersection between AD and vascular brain disease.

Currently, Dr. Ottoy’s lab applies advanced neuroimaging techniques to study AD and vascular disease, with a particular focus on white matter brain networks and neuroinflammation. She also studies novel targets for small vessel disease and their interactions with AD. Her program is built on two main lines of research: (i) the immuno-vascular contributions to mixed dementia, and (ii) the role of brain networks and connectivity in driving pathology spread.