"We were able to show, in rats, that the tracer accumulated to a higher degree in demyelinated areas than in control areas," Popko said.
"All existing PET tracers used for imaging demyelination bind to myelin and, consequently, demyelinated lesions show as decreases in signal, which can be problematic for imaging small lesions," said Pedro Brugarolas, PhD, first author of the paper and currently a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. "3F4AP is the first tracer whose signal increases with demyelination, potentially solving some of the problems of its predecessors."
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Finally, in collaboration with scientists at the NIH, the researchers conducted a study in healthy monkeys. They confirmed that radiolabeled 3F4AP enters the brain of primates and localizes to areas where there is little myelin.
"We think that this PET approach can provide complementary information to MRI which can help us follow MS lesions over time," Popko said. "It has the potential to track responses to remyelinating therapies, an unmet need. This approach should also help determine how much disruption of the myelin sheath contributes to other central nervous system disorders."
That list includes leukodystrophies, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and "even maladies not traditionally associated with demyelination," Popko suggested, "such as brain ischemia, psychiatric disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's."
"A tracer to monitor changes in something as ubiquitous as potassium channels could have applications for other diseases where these channels are involved," Brugarolas added,
More than 2.3 million people worldwide suffer from multiple sclerosis, according to 2013 data from the MS International Federation. None of the 15 current FDA-approved drugs for MS are able to cure the disease; they modify or suppress the immune system, reducing the number and severity of flare-ups and less often, slowing the visible marks of brain damage.
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