A New Nuclear Medicine Technique Can Fight Brain Disease – The New Indian Express

IANS

NEW YORK: A new method of molecular imaging helps monitor the success of gene therapy in all areas of the brain, allowing doctors to effectively treat brain diseases such as the disease Parkinson's, Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis, a new study suggests.

The researchers said that although reporter gene systems have been a key tool in molecular imaging for a number of years, they have not allowed surveillance of all the regions of the brain. The Tomography Probe / Probe System (PET) allows, for the first time, to non-invasively monitor the level and location of gene expression in all areas of the brain.

"It is difficult to find a reporter gene and an imaging agent that can be used in all regions of the brain with a high signal-to-noise ratio," said Thomas Haywood. Stanford University, California.

"18F-DASA-23 is a novel radiotracer, or reporter probe, that is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and targeting the pyruvate kinase M2 protein in the central nervous system with minimal endogenous expression in the brain "

" This allows us to monitor the expression of reporter genes and ultimately therapeutic gene expression in all regions The researchers mentioned that the radiotracer has recently undergone in vitro badays in the United States. for the early detection of the therapeutic response in glioblastoma, the most aggressive cancer that begins in the brain

. study, presented at the annual meeting SNMMI 2018, after validation of the utility of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) as a PET reporter gene, mice were infected with a virus containing the gene and then subjected to 18F-DASA-23 radiotracer imaging over a period of two months to observe the increase of PKM2 expression over time.

The results, confirmed by studies on the uptake of 18F-DASA-23 and mRNA badysis, showed a good correlation between PKM2 and D other studies have showed an increase in PKM2 expression in infected mice compared to controls.

These encouraging data suggest that PKM2 has the potential to be developed into a PET reporter gene system for imaging gene therapy in the field. The researchers said the central nervous system was involved.