Project description
PET imaging in early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder with complicated early diagnosis and a lack of effective methods to monitor disease progression and treatment. Molecular imaging techniques, in particular positron emission tomography (PET), can improve disease diagnosis and enhance the evaluation of the effectiveness of new treatments based on individual patient pathology. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PET-AlphaSy project is assembling a network of academic and industrial partners specialising in radiopharmaceuticals to train the next generation of radiopharmaceutical scientists. The research and training will focus on α-synuclein fibril formation as the hallmark of PD. The goal of the consortium is to develop and validate PET tracers for the visualisation of pathogenic aggregates of α-synuclein.
Objective
Too often, physicians have to rely on a trial and error strategy until the most effective treatment for an individual patient is identified. This leads to a critical loss of time, making the healthcare system ineffective and expensive. In respect to drug development, a high failure rate is apparent at all stages of development and ways to reduce this have high priority for the pharmaceutical industry. To this end, drug development and medicinal treatment need to be more personalized and molecular imaging techniques, in particular Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging, can be used to achieve this by 1) evaluating the effectiveness of new treatments emerging from the pharmaceutical industry, 2) improving the ability to diagnose diseases, and 3) aid tailoring the treatment based on individual patient pathology. A limiting factor to develop new effective PET imaging probes is the insufficient number of radiopharmaceutical scientists presently available. Our consortium has assembled 6 radiopharmaceutical frontline academic and 10 non-academic partners to address this problem and train the next generation of radiopharmaceutical scientists. Our training will be focused on an unmet scientific need for Parkinson’s Disease (PD). Fibril formation of protein α-synuclein is thought to be the hallmark for PD, but presently, there are no validated PET tracers available for visualization of pathogenic aggregates of this protein. Our scientific goal is to develop such tracer. A successful tracer will have a strong impact on PD-diagnosis and facilitate the development of effective disease modifying treatments. To reach our goals, it is necessary to train our early stage researchers in a highly interdisciplinary fashion spanning from chemistry, over biology, GMP and pharmacy to nuclear medicine. Furthermore, this consortium will train entrepreneurial skills and facilitate start up new enterprises in the current favorable radioisotope market situation.
Fields of science
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacydrug discovery
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineradiologynuclear medicine
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculesproteins
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepathology
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicineneurologyparkinson
Keywords
Programme(s)
Coordinator
1165 Kobenhavn
Denmark