Innovative contrast agents for more… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

Up-to-date on 17 July 2020

The EU-funded CONQUER job centered on improving and growing the versatility of distinction agents. These are substances that can be administered prior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to much more plainly and specifically distinguish unique tissues and fluids in the system: from muscle, cartilage and nerves to cancer tumours and the movement of blood by arteries, veins and the mind.

The technological know-how is indispensable for knowing and diagnosing disease as nicely as developing new therapies. Nevertheless, the use of distinction mechanisms in MRI scans has been limited mainly because of time and charge aspects, as nicely as worries about publicity to some agents this sort of as individuals primarily based on the exceptional-earth element gadolinium.

The CONQUER workforce hence sought superior and smarter choices, like distinction agents that can be turned on or off remotely by adjusting magnetic fields in order to make scans of unique tissues much more specific and adaptable.

‘We have furnished a proof of basic principle for a new distinction mechanism that presents two positive aspects. We now have the prospective to switch the distinction on and off, and we use an choice agent to gadolinium about which there is open discussion all over prospective toxicity difficulties,’ states job coordinator Hermann Scharfetter at Graz College of Know-how in Austria.

The CONQUER team’s research centered on a adaptable distinction procedure referred to as ‘quadrupole peace enhancement’ which will work on the foundation of how indicators produced by the spins of protons within tissues decay, or ‘relax’, above time as they interact with the distinction agent. Rather of gadolinium-primarily based substances, the CONQUER workforce applied novel bismuth-primarily based agents.

‘We have proven for the very first time that quadrupole peace improvement of solvent protons by the spin of bismuth nuclei is probable in liquids. This opens up novel avenues for additional research in this place,’ Scharfetter states.

To help the use of new distinction agents, the job partners also made new tools for MRI scanners, like novel factors that have been equipped experimentally to a medical 3T MRI scanner, and which have resulted in a patent application.

Scharfetter and his workforce are continuing research in the place with new initiatives in the pipeline, driving ahead promising areas of study centered in certain on optimising nanoparticles in novel distinction agents. This ongoing work could significantly enrich the capability of MRI technological know-how to create a further knowing of disease and even much more efficient and accurate diagnoses for sufferers.