The Dementia Researcher, ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast is back for a second, 5-part series. Where the interviewee becomes the interviewer. With five leading researchers discussing their research, their field, and the work of the Alzheimer’s Association ISTAART Professional Interest Area they represent.
Part Three – Professor Jennifer Whitwell [1] interviews Dr Betty Tijms [2].
Jennifer Whitwell is a Professor of Radiology at the May Clinic, Rochester having originally grown up and trained in the UK. Jennifer’s research focuses on the investigation of neuroimaging biomarkers, including MRI and PET, in different neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. She is particularly focused on using neuroimaging to better understand disease mechanisms and progression in patients with atypical clinical presentations of Alzheimer’s disease, highlighting the phenotypic heterogeneity present in this disease. Jennifer is representing the Atypical Alzheimer’s Disease PIA.
Dr Betty Tijms is an Associate Professor at the Alzheimer center, department of Neurology, Amsterdam UMC in the Netherlands. Jennifer’s research focusses on better understanding interindividual differences in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease that are related to developing dementia, through MR imaging and CSF proteomic analyses. She has recently, started work on cerebrospinal fluid proteomics as one of the most comprehensive measures to get more insight into interindividual differences in underlying pathophysiological processes. Betty is representing the Neuroimaging PIA.
The Alzheimer’s Association International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART) convenes the global Alzheimer’s and dementia science community. Members share knowledge, fuel collaboration and advance research to find more effective ways to detect, treat and prevent Alzheimer’s and other dementias. Professional Interest Areas (PIA) are an assembly of ISTAART members with common subspecialties or interests.
There are currently 27 PIA covering a wide range of interests and fields, from the PIA to Elevate Early Career Researchers to Biofluid Based Biomarkers and everything in between.
To sign-up to ISTAART and a PIA visit www.alz.org/istaart/ [3]
Voice Over:
Hello, and thank you for listening to the second season of the ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast series brought to you by Dementia Researcher. ISTAART as a professional society and part of the Alzheimer’s Association representing scientists, physicians, and other dementia professionals active in researching and understanding the causes and treatments of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. In this five-part series, we, once again, asked members of the ISTAART Professional Interest Areas to take turns at interviewing their colleagues and being interviewed themselves, with the interviewee going on to be the next episode’s interviewer. We’ll be releasing one of these podcasts each day, as a build-up to the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Virtual Conference to showcase the work of ISTAART PIAs. Thank you for listening.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Hello everyone and thanks for joining us. I’m Jennifer Whitwell. I’m a professor of radiology at Mayo clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in the USA. I’m the Incoming Chair of the Atypical Alzheimer’s Disease PIA, which focuses on research into non-memory clinical presentations of Alzheimer’s disease. And today I’m delighted to be talking with Betty Tijms. Hello, Betty, can I start by asking you to introduce yourself and tell us which PIA you’re involved with?
Dr Betty Tijms:
Hello,
Dr Betty Tijms:
I’m Betty Tijms from the Alzheimer’s Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and I’m an Associate Professor there, and I have a background in bioinformatics in psychology, and a lot of my research involves structural MRI and I’m the Chair of the Neuroimaging PIA for a bit longer.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Great. Do you focus on Alzheimer’s disease or a range of different neurodegenerative diseases?
Dr Betty Tijms:
Yeah, I look at different diseases, but most of my work focuses on Alzheimer’s and then the pre-dementia stages of Alzheimer’s disease. And so that will be in people who, do not have dementia yet, but have at least an abnormal amyloid biomarker.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Right. So what brought you to dementia research? How did you end up here?
Dr Betty Tijms:
That’s a good question. So I’ve been thinking about that for, well, this podcast of course, but it seems very logical and so I’ve always been fascinated in why people differ that much. So, and we could still understand each other, right. So well, we obviously different in our, the mother language that we speak. So mine and still, even with my learned English, we can understand each other and that might not always be correct. And I think that’s fascinating already normal people, but then if you go to illness, it becomes more relevant and also maybe more pronounced the differences between people, and especially in Alzheimer’s disease. It’s really fascinating. So I just said that I’m really interested in the pre dementia stages of Alzheimer’s and there you can see that having abnormal amyloids in the brain at a group level is not good news. So those people tend to decline in cognitive function. But if you look at individuals that vary so much, and I think this is something that we need to better understand why some people maybe develop dementia within two years after they had their first measurement or why other people would remain stable for 10 years and never develop dementia.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
And I think neuroimaging is critical for that, right? Both for defining the patients you’re looking at now that we have PET tracers to look for proteins in the brain, I think, and, and to follow them over time and look at different biomarkers in the brain. So what do you think are the hot topics at the minute in the field of neuroimaging?
Dr Betty Tijms:
Now well, it’s biomarkers and I would say it’s the blood markers, but that’s not the imaging. I think it is imaging what makes us better understand how well the blood markers are performing because you need to have some sort of gold standard and you need large populations, especially because people differ that much. And that’s where imaging is really important at moment to better understand whether the tau and the amyloid we’re measuring in the blood, whether it’s really reflecting something we can see on a PET scan, for example, and also structural MRI, the good old atrophy mind share it still remains so important because this is one of the measures that’s more closely related to the cognitive symptoms that people develop in their rates of decline. So I think that’s really one of the hot topics and heterogeneity in diseases, of course.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
And that’s what our atypical AD PIA comes in cause we look a lot at heterogeneity, particularly in Alzheimer’s disease and how neuroimaging relates to the heterogeneity we see in clinical presentation. And new imaging is vital for that. I’m fascinated at the minute, we have all these techniques that allow us to look at so many different aspects of the brain with neuroimaging, like the resting state and we have a diffusion tensor imaging to look at white matter tracks. I think new imaging has such a ability to teach us about mechanisms of what’s happening in the brain and how disease is spreading.
Dr Betty Tijms:
Even more has found sequences so that now it’s becoming so much, well, not easier, but more accessible for example, to image how the blood-brain barrier is functioning. So we’re really probing with these imaging techniques and the different sequences, all the different aspects of how our brain is functioning or deteriorating.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I agree. There’s this sort of almost endless possibilities for ways to probe different things that are happening with the brain, yet with neuroimaging it’s a fascinating area.
Dr Betty Tijms:
And what I liked so much about Neuroimaging PIA, because you would almost think, why do we have a separate neuroimaging PIA because imaging is really important for all the PIAs, I think. But the nice thing is that we have this really broad spectrum of people involved in our PIA going from really hardcore physics to more applied medical doctors, and I think it’s because we have all these different expertise’s that makes it really nice to be in a part of this whole PIA.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
You know, and that leads me well into the next question, which is, tell us a little about how your PIA supports your field of research, especially given this diversity, just how you pointed out, you have programmers on one end and physicians on the other end, and everybody’s interested in using neuroimaging in different diseases. We have many different new genetic diseases that fall under the rubric of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Dr Betty Tijms:
And all diseases are welcome, of course, in our PIA. And so traditionally we would have an educational day that will be in front of the conference and then a full pre-conference day for the Neuroimaging PIA it’s called AIC, with just one ‘A’ and we would have this very diverse program of talks that will cover these different aspects, some more the applied part of imaging and also talks on recent developments in new techniques. And what is really nice about these Neuroimaging PIA days is that you have this relatively small group together in one room and that you can make people accessible. So the experts and also the juniors all together, but unfortunately with COVID we couldn’t come together. So this was really hard for everyone, I think, but mostly for the junior scientists I think, and this is why we thought that it would be a good idea to chop up our normal schedule of the imaging day and then organize webinars around it, and also for the educational part.
Dr Betty Tijms:
So we had this kind of two parallel webinar series with very accessible educational topics so that you can learn what you actually do with an MRI and what different sequences are important for different other aspects of the brain. We recently had an educational session on how to use different types of software. And then in parallel, we had the new topics webinars with the new advances in the fields. And what I myself liked about that the most was that we would invite a couple of experts and then have a discussion amongst themselves. And the audience could ask questions through the chat. And we got so many questions and so high quality. And I think that this whole online medium kind of lowered the threshold for people to really get into this dialogue.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I agree. I’ve seen that too with our PIA, when we’ve had webinars, there’s been a lot of engagement. People have been very interested. People have shown up to them and ask questions. I think it’s been really valuable for everybody. I love the fact that your PIA had the software related webinars, cause you do have people that are just trying to learn how to analyze brain scans and it was not straightforward. So to learn about those major software’s, I think is such a benefit for them as they’re coming into the field, as well as mixing it up with educational webinars. Another question I had, given the diversity of the membership of the Neuroimaging PIA and it’s a big PIA, there’s a lot of people attend your Alzheimer’s day. I was going to ask you about collaboration and how you’ve been collaborating with other PIAs, maybe through your webinars since we’re mainly virtual right now.
Dr Betty Tijms:
It is through the webinars. So it was with your PIA that we would have had a joint session. So the imaging days, members-only closed off days, very exclusive for neuroimaging folk. With the Atypical PIA, we would have had first time ever that one part of our day will be open also for another PIA. But, what we are trying to do now is to collaborate through joint webinars. And one is coming up in a bit.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
The Frontal Temporal Dementia PIA next week.
Dr Betty Tijms:
Exactly, yeah. I think in July, but it’s also on our members page and the whole overview of all that activity stuff we have. So I think that these webinars make it easier also to talk to each other and collaborate between the different PIAs.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Yeah, definitely. I’ve seen some great ones come out from your PIA. So, and I know about the one next week because I’m Chairing it though. The FTD one, remember? I think that would be a really nice one in imaging in FTD. So tell us a little more about the committee. Like how is your group organized and, and who do you have on your committee?
Dr Betty Tijms:
So we have Renaud La Joie, he’s the Vice Chair and he’ll be assumed the real Chair, and we have Laura Wisse who is the Educational Chair and she’s responsible for the educational sessions. We have a Communications Chair Sam Lockart, and then we have a Senior Committee Member and a Junior Committee Member, and together we try to kind of organize normally the imaging day, but now these other activities that we’re doing. The schools that we have an hour seems not enough to discuss everything and we made it quite hard for ourselves. So what we also have in the Neuroimaging PIA is an award for the best Junior Scientist’s and Senior Scientist’s paper. And we had revised the criteria for this, I made it more transparent to select the best papers. So now we have a real independent committee and with lots of members in there, and this year we had so many papers being nominated, so I think this really helps. And also this year we have an extra prize, so we have two kind of junior awards and one senior award.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I think that’s a great thing that you have the awards and that’s been going on for a number of years now, as long as I can remember. So tell us how do you think that early career researchers that are listening to us talking here can become involved in PIA?
Dr Betty Tijms:
It’s really easy. Just go to the ISTAART website and become a member and then become a member of our PIA, and then you can join and participate in whatever you want. So the imaging day is the most accessible one, I would think because you can present a poster or maybe even have a talk. And because you have kind of a smaller selection of scientists on that day, that makes it easier to approach other people, I think. But we also have a business meeting and not a lot of people realize that it’s really free to go there for everyone and then you can have some real influence on what the agenda will be like for the rest of the year. Just shout something that you think is important and we should organize, and you can also volunteer to help organizing because everyone can do something. It’s the privilege of the executive committee.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Right? Definitely. And so are you having the educational workshops this year in this sort of virtual hybrid format, or what’s happening with the educational…cause those are good for junior members to sort of come along and just learn about the basics of neuroimaging and different diseases, right?
Dr Betty Tijms:
So, in the hybrid version of the full conference, we have one, or I think 30 minutes live, and then we only have time for awards and we’ll also have a really special interactive session, that’s still secret. So join in and see what it is.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I’m curious.
Dr Betty Tijms:
But the educational day that we usually have, we have webinar [inaudible 00:17:47] that as well. So we’ll a new series of educational webinars with new speakers and maybe you’ll get new information as well from them. And we also still have the research updates and somewhat new from last year is that we are selecting abstracts that were submitted to the Neuroimaging PIA this year. And we’ll have one full webinar that will be dedicated to those abstracts, not every, all the abstracts, because it’s way too many to pick out themes and mostly junior scientists actually. So I think for all the early career researchers, join and just ask your questions.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
That’s it and submit your abstracts, right, when we have the calls for abstracts.
Dr Betty Tijms:
Enjoy the business meeting because they can really do something. If you want to, you don’t have to, you can also just join and listen because that’s nice as well.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I think the business meetings are a great time that anybody can just come along and make a suggestion, right? The things that they like and don’t like about the format and the meetings, obviously everything is different this year from how it normally is and maybe everything could be changed next year. Who knows?
Dr Betty Tijms:
I hope so. I hope so that it will change to in real life things.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I miss that. I definitely miss that. So what is your PIA’s aims for the coming year? What do you have scheduled or what are you thinking about doing over the next year?
Dr Betty Tijms:
So that will be mostly those webinars and we want to keep on collaborating with other PIAs, and I think there are some plans of writing overview papers. There’s one collaboration with the biofluid biomarkers, ah it’s the BBBPS, biofluid biomarker. Ah, this is so horrible.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Another ‘b’.
Dr Betty Tijms:
But it’s biomarkers in biofluids, so that’s most important part. And I’m involved in that as well. And we’re trying to synthesize some of the literature that’s imaging and biofluid markers are being combined, but this will be a longer term project and everyone is welcome to join. But I think that the webinars will be taking up the most space for the coming year.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Given our virtual environment still though, I think there’s almost been a, not a blessing, but I think this format has actually worked very well. The fact that we’ve all been forced to be virtual and have these webinars, I think it’s forced us to do more, to support the field and to be out there more with the webinars. So I think advancing something good that’s come out of this.
Dr Betty Tijms:
I agree. And it made the world smaller. It’s more accessible. I think it’s great that ISTAART made our webinars freely accessible also for non-members. And also, well, we would not have spoken together a couple of weeks ago probably if it wasn’t for days online, I think. It’s also with your colleague scientists that you get into contact more easily and strange as we could have picked up the phone earlier, we’ll just wait for the conference and this one person.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Yes, I know, that’s true. So are you presenting personally at the conference this year? Or maybe does the Neuroimaging PIA have an FRS or anything that you want to do a plug for?
Dr Betty Tijms:
Yeah. And we do, we have several FRSs. We have one FRS on new imaging methods and that will be mostly on tracer development and another FRS stuff we’re involved in is a collaboration with the Diversity PIA.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Oh, great. That’ll be interesting. Excellent, so I guess my final question that I have here is really what advice would you give to any aspiring dementia researcher out there who’s looking to get into dementia research, or I guess in neuroimaging, particularly since we’re talking about neuroimaging today into the neuroimaging fields.
Dr Betty Tijms:
In the neuroimaging field. So I think always follow your heart and your passion. I mean, research can be really hard and especially in these times. So you need to feel this drive that you really want to solve something, and then it helps if you look for people who are passionate about their topic as well, and try to get into contact with them. And, and I think another thing for junior scientists, don’t be so hard on yourself. You don’t need to be a specialist on all the topics. I think it’s more strength if you realize that you’re not. And if you realize that it’s really nice to talk to other people who do have a different expertise and I think my best work comes out of collaborations with other people. And it’s also makes your work so much more fun.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I totally agree and I don’t think we ever stop learning. I think it’s better to go into it, not thinking you know everything and being open to ideas and to other people’s opinions and to changing your ideas, if that’s what the research says, be flexible.
Dr Betty Tijms:
And exactly, and I think longer I’m doing this, the more I realize that I really don’t know anything. And every little step you put forward, opens up this whole new books of new questions, but that’s something I enjoy.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
I agree. I think that’s something that’s amazing about this field is that you can never know the answers, right? We don’t know the answer. So there’s always questions to ask, and things to discover, particularly with neuroimaging.
Dr Betty Tijms:
It always sounds as if you do know what you’re looking at, but in reality, it’s all pictures. So that neuroimaging on itself, apart from PET, but still, also in PETs and where you have a tracer in, inspiring to amyloid, you all also have signals in your picture that might not be amyloid plaques. Yeah. There’s so much more information in these scans in all different sequences than what we’re using now at the moment. So there’s much more to learn. Of course.
Professor Jennifer Whitwell:
Definitely. Well, it’s been a pleasure talking to you today, Betty. Thank you so much. I think it’s time to end today’s podcast recording. Thank you so much, Betty.
Dr Betty Tijms:
Thank you.
Voice Over:
Thank you for listening. You can find profiles on today’s panelists and information on how to become involved in ISTAART on our website at dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, and also at alz.org/ISTRAART. We’ll be back tomorrow with the next recording in our ISTAART PIA Relay Podcast series. Finally, please remember to like, subscribe, and leave a review of our podcast. You can do this on our website and in your podcast app. Thank you
Voice Over:
Brought to you, by www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk [4] in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.
Voice Over:
Hello, this is Adam Smith. I’m just dropping into the podcast stream to ask you a favor. Dementia Researcher has been nominated for a People’s Choice Podcast Award, and it would be fantastic if you would take a moment to vote for us. You’ll find the link in the text below the podcast. And if you visit podcastawards.com, register an account and you’ll find Dementia Researcher in the science and medicine category. Choose us, hit submit, job done. Dementia Researcher is a real passion of mine, I so enjoy producing the podcast and occasionally hosting as well. All of our guests give up their time freely, and I think this will be a fantastic way to recognize their contribution and to help put important dementia research on the map. So please, if you have a moment, it will be fantastic, if you could take the time to vote. Thank you very much for listening and again, click the link in the text below or go to www.podcastawards.com [5] by the 31st of July. Thank you.
END
Like what you hear? Please review, like, and share our podcast – and don’t forget to subscribe to ensure you never miss an episode.
If you would like to share your own experiences or discuss your research in a blog or on a podcast, drop us a line to adam.smith@nihr.ac.uk [6] or find us on twitter @dem_researcher [7]
You can find our podcast on iTunes [8], SoundCloud [9] and Spotify [10] (and most podcast apps) – our narrated blogs are now also available as a podcast. [11]
This podcast is brought to you in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, who we thank for their ongoing support.