The Karikari Lab

We're excited to welcome James Emanuel as our new Senior Research Coordinator and You-Rim Lee as a Post-Doctoral Fellow to the Karikari Lab! 🎉 We can’t wait to see the amazing contributions you'll both bring to our team. Here’s to great things ahead! 🌟 #NewBeginnings

In vivo hyperphosphorylation of tau is associated with synaptic loss and behavioral abnormalities in the absence of tau seeds - Nature Neuroscience Mice expressing humanized mutant tau exhibit synaptic loss and behavioral abnormalities in the absence of abnormal tau conformers, suggesting that hyperphosphorylated tau can be pathological, at least...

In vivo hyperphosphorylation of #tau is associated with synaptic loss and behavioral abnormalities even in the absence of tau seeds 🧪🧠

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Monocyte-derived macrophages act as reinforcements when microglia fall short in Alzheimer’s disease - Nature Neuroscience This article discusses a puzzling issue in brain pathology: why brain-resident microglia are insufficient for protection, and why myeloid cells are needed from the periphery. Several strategies are pr...

Monocyte-derived macrophages act as reinforcements when microglia fall short in Alzheimer’s disease
@natureneuro.bsky.social @maabella.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congrats to our PI, Dr. Karikari for being selected for the 2025 Senior Vice Chancellor's Research Seminar Series! Don't miss his lecture on June 13th! #PittResearch #AcademicExcellence
www.health.pitt.edu/news/pitt-fa...

Dr. Karikari has joined as an investigator on the NIH-funded Brain CHEC project, offering tailored educational interventions to Pittsburgh’s Black community to help demystify Alzheimer’s disease! #HealthEquity
health.pitt.edu/news/encoura...

The Karikari Lab reflects on a productive 2024, marked by publications, prestigious awards, and the growth of our team. We thank our lab members for driving progress, our funders for their support, and our collaborators for their partnership. Wishing you all a joyful New Year! #teamwork

These findings indicate that blood-based p-tau217 can be measured either with plasma or serum, enabling more hospital systems to adopt it for early and accurate detection of Alzheimer's disease.

We found that plasma and serum p-tau217 showed equivalent clinical accuracies to identify Alzheimer’s disease. Yet, there were a few technical differences between plasma and serum p-tau217 that need to be accounted for.

Across two human cohorts, we collected blood and processed aliquots from the same draw separately into EDTA plasma and serum.
We compared plasma and serum levels of p-tau217 using four assays evaluated (three commercial and a new one developed in the Karikari Lab)

Why compare Serum vs. Plasma? Most available assays use plasma for p-tau217 measurement, but some clinical systems prefer serum. As the field moves this blood biomarker into the clinic, validation of serum p-tau217 is necessary to ensure widespread use.

Equivalence of plasma and serum for clinical measurement of p-tau217: comparative analyses of four blood-based assays Background Phosphorylated tau (p-tau) 217 is a promising blood biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). However, most p-tau217 assays have been validated solely in ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA...

We wrapped 2024 with this a pre-print on the promising Alzheimer's disease blood biomarker p-tau217. We performed an analytical study comparing the utility of using blood processed into plasma versus into serum for p-tau217 analysis.
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

We are excited to join the growing neurodegenerative research community on BlueSky and look forward to being able to see all the great work our colleagues are doing worldwide and to share some of our findings with you all! #AlzheimersResearch #science #UPITT

Hello everyone! We are the Karikari Lab, a research laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh committed to developing innovative, simple, and accessible diagnostic biomarker tests and tools aimed at advancing the clinical management of brain disorders and enhancing patient outcomes.