Novel PET Imaging Agent Could Help Guide Therapy for Brain Diseases

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Researchers have developed a new imaging agent that could help guide and assess treatments for people with various neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis. The agent, which is used in positron emission tomography (PET) scans, targets receptors in nerve cells in the brain that are involved in learning and memory. The study is featured in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Swiss and German scientists developed the new PET radioligand, 11C-Me-NB1, for imaging GluN1/GluN2B-containing N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors (a class of glutamate receptor) in nerve cells. When NMDA receptors are activated, there is an increase of calcium (Ca2+) in the cells, but Ca2+ levels that are too high can cause cell death. Medications that block NMDA receptors are therefore used for the treatment of a wide range of neurological conditions from depression, neuropathic pain and schizophrenia to ischemic stroke and diseases causing dementia.

“The significance of the work lies in the fact that we have for the first time developed a useful PET radioligand that can be applied to image the GluN2B receptor subunit of the NMDA receptor complex in humans,” explains Simon M. Ametamey, PhD, of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, ETH Zurich, in Switzerland.

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Source: SNMMI