Imaging of neurogenative diseases
A goal for ANSTO is to provide a means for the early diagnosis and enhanced patient management for a variety of Neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's, Huntington's Chorea, and Parkinson's Disease, as well as the autoimmune disease, Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
At present, there is no cure or effective long term treatment for these diseases. Most, but not all, of these diseases have an onset that is later in life. ANSTO LifeSciences focuses to provide an imaging technique that can detect the disease for testing the effect of treatments. This priority will become more important in the coming years as the older (> 60 yr) population increases in proportion to the general population.
ANSTO researchers have targeted the Peripheral Benzodiazepine Receptor (PBR). The PBR was targeted to take advantage of the fact that there are few PBRs in a normal brain. The PBR are concentrated mainly in the peripheral tissue (e.g. adrenal glands). However, the PBR are up-regulated in microglial cells in the brain. These cells (similar to macrophages) are increased in response to an inflammatory stimulus that occurs in the brain. All of the diseases cited above have this characteristic. This suggests that PBR-directed compounds could be used in any or all of these diseases.
ANSTO LifeSciences has synthesised a number of small molecules which bind with high affinity to this receptor. These compounds have been labelled with both SPECT (123I) and PET (18F) isotopes and the intellectual property has been secured.