At the 2012 Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Vancouver, B.C., Dr. Richard Caselli and Dr. Marwan Sabbagh discuss the direction of Alzheimer's disease research and some of the hot topics at the meeting, including presymptomatic clinical trials involving individuals at high risk for Alzheimer's, the value of amyloid PET imaging techniques, and exploiting the discovery of a protective mutation against Alzheimer's with beta-secretase inhibitors.