Fireside Chat: New Efforts & Technologies to Avoid Invasive Lumbar Puncture – Comparing Blood- Based Biomarkers, Imaging Biomarkers, Olfactory Neurons, Extracellular Vesicles & Emerging Minimally Invasive Approaches
1:30 pm - Tuesday 1st December 2026
- Address the critical operational and patient burden challenges driving the urgent need for CSF alternatives: European sites increasingly unwilling to perform lumbar punctures, staff training requirements across multi-site trials, and the strategic limitations when you cannot run studies in Europe that force programmes to the US or abandon biomarker strategies entirely
- Compare the full spectrum of emerging technologies that eliminate lumbar puncture: ultrasensitive plasma biomarkers, achieving CSF-level correlations for trial pre-screening, olfactory bulb neurons providing direct CNS access, neuronalenriched extracellular vesicles and accessible peripheral nerve sampling that reflects brain pathology without invasive CNS procedures
- Debate practical implementation realities and validation status: which approaches show sufficient plasma-CSF correlation to confidently replace lumbar puncture in your specific indication, how exploratory technologies like EVs and olfactory sampling balance biological promise against current lack of standardisation and clinical validation
