MILabs’ advanced in vivo imaging enables groundbreaking research

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) pathology may begin in the gut and travel from there to the brain long before a patient becomes symptomatic. Researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine imaged this mechanism of PD with U-SPECT after administering α-synuclein preformed fibrils (PFF) into the stomach of mice. A month later, the animals showed clear PD symptoms and loss of dopamine transporters.

S. Kim et al., Transneuronal Propagation of Pathologic a-Synuclein from the Gut to the Brain Models Parkinson’s Disease, Neuron 2019 
 

²²³Ra is the first approved α-particle emitter for cancer therapy and is an effective treatment for castrate resistant prostate cancer patients with bone metastatic disease. However, mechanisms of action and factors that affect  ²²³Ra distribution are poorly understood. Researchers at Washington University and Johns Hopkins, utilized MILabs’ high-sensitivity SPECT to quantify ²²³Ra distributions in vivo which allows to elucidate radiobiological effects and to optimize protocols.

D.S. Abou et al.,First Whole-Body Three-Dimensional Tomographic Imaging of Alpha Particle Emitting Radium-223, bioRxiv,2018

Quantification of fluorescence and PET intensities (half-life time corrected) exhibited similar percentages of injected dose (%ID) in organs and tumor. At later time points, the PET signals decreased stronger due to the decay of the radioactive tracer and were not detectable in most organs after 144 h, marked by *, whereas the fluorescence signals were still detectable.

S. Rosenhain et al., Validation of fluorescence tomography combined with micro-CT: a longitudinal in vivo comparison to PET-imaging, WMIC 2018 

An increasing number of in-vivo preclinical researchers is discovering the synergistic translational imaging advantages of MILabs scalable PET/SPECT/Optical/CT platform. New product acquisitions include:

– Tel Aviv University: PET/SPECT/CT system
– UT Dallas: 3D Hybrid Optical/CT system
– Miami University: PET/SPECT/CT system
– Columbia University, New York: 3D Hybrid Optical/CT system
– Queen Mary University, London: PET/SPECT/CT system
– Baker Institute, Sydney: 3D Hybrid Optical/CT system
– Cyclotron Radiopharmacy Preclinical Complex, El Alto, Bolivia: PET/SPECT/CT system