No injections
No exposure to radiation
Cost-effective; can be added to the MRI that most patients already receive as part of their initial workup
Potential to provide adjunctive information in indications beyond Parkinson’s disease, such as Alzheimer’s disease and schizophrenia [6,7,9-12]
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David Sulzer, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and co-author of multiple studies using neuromelanin MRI, commented, “The research suggests that neuromelanin MRI is a promising approach with the potential to become part of the standard of care for the workup of all patients suspected of Parkinson’s and related diseases.”
One of the first researchers to study neuromelanin, Luigi Zecca, MD, PhD, head of the Brain Aging and Neurodegeneration Unit at the Institute of Biomedical Technologies-CNR in Milan, commented on the news, “After many years of hard work to show neuromelanin MRI could be a powerful tool, it’s exciting to see this technology finally become available to physicians and patients.”
Despite these benefits, there have been no FDA-approved devices capable of providing clinicians with analysis of neuromelanin MRI due to a lack of automation and standardization that has prevented its clinical use. Historically, the standardization of neuromelanin measurement has been difficult due to variability in results among MRI scanners, even those from the same manufacturer and model [7,8]. NM-101 contains algorithms that enabled for the first time the fully automated analysis and the cross-scanner harmonization of neuromelanin MRI scans [8-10,12,13].
Guillermo Horga, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Clifford Cassidy, PhD, now Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa, were pioneers of the original algorithms and authors of studies using neuromelanin MRI in neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia [9,12].
“It’s great to see neuromelanin MRI become more accessible in clinical settings,” said Dr. Horga. “We hope this opens the door for the adoption of neuromelanin MRI into the clinical workflow for patients with neuropsychiatric disorders.”
“Now that we’re able to access measurements of neuromelanin-associated signal in both the substantia nigra and locus coeruleus,” added Dr. Cassidy, “it allows us to obtain potentially useful adjunctive information about many other diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, and PTSD.”
