Cynthia Lemere, PhD, from Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA gives an overview of 2 new exciting projects underway for Alzheimer’s disease at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) 2017, London, UK. This includes the U.S. POINTER study looking at lifestyle interventions in preventing Alzheimer’s disease, and the IDEAS study which is testing the ability of PET scans to detect amyloid protein and improve Alzheimer’s diagnosis by Dr Gil Rabinovici. PET scans will play an important role in not only diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease but also in monitoring disease progression or regression. PET scans could have a future role in monitoring therapeutic efficacy not only just for therapeutic drugs but also lifestyle interventions.