Maura Malpetti

  • Race Against Dementia ARUK Fellow
  • Senior Research Associate
  • E-mail: mm2243[at]cam.ac.uk
Maura Malpetti

Location

  • Cambridge Centre for, Frontotemporal Dementia and related disorders, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Herchel Smith Building, Forvie Site, Robinson Way, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, CB2 0SZ

About

I am a Race Against Dementia Alzheimer’s Research UK Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Frontotemporal Dementia and Related disorders. I am interested in the study of neuropathology, biomarkers and clinical features of neurodegenerative diseases, with special interest in frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Alzheimer's disease.

 

I originally trained in Italy for my BSc and MSc at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele, where I worked with FDG PET in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. I then moved to the University of Cambridge for my PhD in Clinical Neurosciences working on in vivo neuroimaging makers (i.e. multi-tracer PET and MRI), longitudinal and prognostic modelling in tauopathies. In 2021-2022, I joined the RabLab at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) as a visiting scholar with an exchange fellowship.

Research

My work focuses on the application of neuroimaging techniques (multi-tracer PET and MRI) to investigate the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases, in order to identify early diagnostic and prognostic markers in dementia. As a Race Against Dementia Fellow, I am studying novel clinically viable PET and other biomarkers for inflammation, tau and synaptic loss in frontotemporal dementia and related disorders. To this end, I am applying an interdisciplinary approach that integrates imaging and clinical data with fluid markers and post-mortem pathology.

 

My main projects focus on:

i) characterising the predictive value of in vivo PET imaging for molecular pathology and inflammation in tauopathies;

ii) identifying novel clinically viable PET and fluid biomarkers in dementias;

iii) investigating the role of behavioural and brain changes in pre-symptomatic genetic frontotemporal dementia.