Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NeuroHyp (Signal-enhanced MRI contrast agents for neurodegeneration)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-03-31
The project was aimed at testing novel contrast agents approaches based on signal enhancements in magnetic resonance in the context of an early detection of neurodegeneration. Signal enhancement of hyperpolarization boosts normal magnetic resonance signals by over four orders of magnitude. This enables to use small molecules and body-own metabolites as potential contrast agents to directly monitor e.g. metabolic events.The idea was to pursue preclinical studies to follow onsets of the disease with new molecular imaging agents. This may be used in conjunction with potential therapies in order to assess whether a treatment for neurodegenerative diseases was successful and to diagnose them early.
The main aim was to investigate if a newly developed contrast agents approach could be used to probe neurodegenerative diseases and can be used for an early detection of such. With respect to the scientific part, we experienced difficulties obtaining groups with specific genotypes. This is overall considered a statistical outlier. We therefore did have large control groups but only insufficient group sizes with neurodegeneration. Overall a trend was observed that the contrast agent could serve as an identification for neurodegenerative diseases (p=0.06 when comparing wildtypes with groups having neurodegeneration as genotype). However, for a full validation further experiments are needed and we are aiming to attract further research funding.
Only trend were observed during the project with no statistical significance. These trends need to be followed up on in the future with further investigations.