Release date: 2017-03-22
Injecting radioactive substances into the human body sounds crazy, but it heralds an effective technique for obtaining a "snapshot" of the body's physiological functions. This is the charm of nuclear medicine imaging. It integrates nuclear technology, computer, chemistry, physics, biology and other multidisciplinary technologies with medicine for disease diagnosis and treatment, drug development and other purposes. Among them, positron emission computed tomography (PET) is a relatively advanced medical imaging technology in this field, which uses radioactive particles to track diseases (cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, etc.).
Today, the research team from the University of California is working on the world's first full-body PET scanner, which enables 3D imaging of the body. They believe that this more accurate, comprehensive and sensitive imaging technology will promote our understanding of the body, while it can monitor the real-time dynamic response of drugs, toxins and other substances in the body.
Figure A is a conventional PET scanner; Figure B is a full body PET scanner (TB-PET)
Last month, they published the first paper in the "Physics in Medicine and Biology", detailing the early progress of the project. This week, the head of the R&D team, Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi of the University of California, published a paper in the journal Science Translational Medicine, looking ahead to the application prospects of this instrument.
The R&D team named it "EXPLORER, EXtreme Performance LOng REsearch scanneR" and hopes it will be used clinically for the first time in 2018. The official website of Science interviewed the two team leaders. The details are as follows:
Q: What are the advantages of EXPLORER compared to traditional PET?
Ramsey Badawi: At the moment, almost all PET molecular imaging techniques used in the clinic are limited by the small amount of signal acquisition. The body's source of radiation releases the signal in all directions, interfering with the final imaging result.
Simon Cherry: Our full body PET scanners can acquire more signals at the same radiation dose. This means that we can reduce the amount of radiation, and under the premise of reducing the radiation dose by 40 times, EXPLORER can still obtain the semaphore equivalent to the existing PET.
Q: What is the specific amount of radiation involved in EXPLORER?
Ramsey Badawi: In the latest calculations, the radiation dose required for whole body PET is equivalent to a round-trip flight between Los Angeles and London.
Q: What are the uses of whole body PET?
Simon Cherry: An exciting application of EXPLORER is to help with drug development. We can bring the drug with a radioactive marker. With PET technology, we can dynamically monitor the drug's response in the body. This helps us detect potential toxic side effects of the drug. Perhaps, in addition to knowing whether "drugs reach the tumor site", future pharmaceutical companies can also understand "the dose of drugs in the liver." Therefore, it can help us screen for better drug candidates, thereby reducing the failure rate of clinical trials.
Ramsey Badawi: Another application direction is toxicology. For example, there are many, many nanoparticles in our environment. It enters the body through various substances such as lipsticks and sunscreens, but we are not sure about their effects on the body. Now, we can try to mark some nanoparticles with a long-lasting tracer. EXPLORER can track them with increased sensitivity and can last up to 1 month. This is the time limit that has not been reached by existing PET technology.
Simon Cherry: In addition to drugs, we can perform similar monitoring on medical technologies such as cell therapy. Specifically, it is to label immune cells or stem cells, and record their activity in the body through PET scan to monitor the efficacy and prognosis.
Q: What obstacles does this technology face from clinical applications?
Simon Cherry: We hope that the first clinical trial will be conducted by the end of 2018. Clinical trials require EXPLORER to be approved by the FDA, and we do not know how long it will take to pass the review. Another issue is the processing of data. How do we export large amounts of data from monitors and electronic devices? How is this data converted into an image? How to store this data? These issues need to be addressed one by one.
Q: What is the cost of EXPLORER compared to existing nuclear medicine imaging technology?
Simon Cherry: This is a very difficult question to answer. The prototype we are developing - 2 meters long, costs 3-5 times the cost of conventional PET. This price is similar to the current high-end MRI.
Ramsey Badawi: We can put costs into consideration. If we can get extra and a lot of information, this means that we are developing a new result that will rewrite the history of PET, we can explore a different business model.
Reference material
World's first full-body PET scanner could aid drug development, monitor environmental toxins
Source: Bio-Exploration (micro-signal biodiscover)
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