Molecular imaging of neurodegenerative pathology using deuterium MRI (MINDER)

Problem: Alzheimer's disease is the main cause of dementia, a disease that affects the memory of older people. Current clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is performed by a doctor, usually by asking the patient a set of questions about their day-to-day experiences and asking them to undertake a memory test. These expert clinical assessments are wrong 30% of the time.

In a research environment, it is possible to make a more accurate diagnosis using a positron emission tomography (PET) scan. These scans use special dyes that highlight parts of the brain affected by the disease. Unfortunately, PET scans are not in routine clinical use because of their high cost and limited availability.

When new drugs become available, it will be vital to have widely accessible tools that can accurately diagnose whether a patient has Alzheimer's disease or not and to monitor how well the drug is working.

Proposed solution: In the project we will adapt existing PET dyes so that they can be used within an magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. MRI is far more widely available than PET. We will adapt the PET dye using a process called deuteration which involves using chemistry to replace hydrogen atoms within the dye with deuterium atoms.

Since living tissue contains only very small amounts of deuterium, this will make it much easier for the MRI scanner to detect if the patient has Alzheimer's disease or not.

Approach: We will test our new 'MRI compatible' dye using a series of experiments, first in a highly controlled environment (test tubes containing the dye and other known ingredients), then in alive genetically modified mice that mimic Alzheimer's disease. We will spend time ensuring our MRI scans are as efficient as possible, and then compare our proposed approach to PET scanning.

Benefits: The approach, if successful, will provide doctors with the tools to accurately diagnose Alzheimer's disease in any hospital.