MicroCT Used for Drug Discovery

A pharmaceutical company is using micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) to capture joint changes in a lab rat model with arthritis. This research was the second published study to make use of its newly established imaging center, where scientists are utilizing diagnostic imaging technologies to track disease in living animals and develop algorithms to assess the progression of disease in response to chemical compounds.

"The main focus of the center is currently to help advance internal candidate compounds,” stated Sundeep Shandra, Ph.D., director of imaging services at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Cambridge, MA, USA). "The disconnect between the observations made in the lab and what actually happens in the clinic is often an insurmountable challenge, because things that we understand very well in the lab do not necessarily translate into equivalent results in man. To address that challenge you need technology that is directly translatable.”

Millennium is developing its lead compounds by utilizing imaging tools traditionally used by radiologists to evaluate patients for imaging intact animals and animal tissue to better distinguish readouts that may be seen in the clinic when they use these agents in humans, according to Dr. Shandra. "By doing this we learn a lot more about the basic science at a lower cost and develop much more confidence in how these candidate compounds will behave downstream in the clinic.”

The company is also using the technology to develop analytic methods to quantify the images. For its latest project, the company developed certain algorithms for the analysis of bone joints. "We show that in preclinical drug discovery we can use these diagnostic tools not only to diagnose certain pathological features, which would have enormous connotations for use in clinical trials later on, but also to come up with quantitative ways to tell whether one compound is different than another or if one dose is better than another,” said Dr. Shandra.

The center, along with the micro-CT for high-resolution small animal imaging, is equipped with several other high-resolution imaging systems, such as a 7-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, a micro-positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, a micro-single photon emission computed tomography (micro-SPECT), and optical bioluminescence and fluorescence instruments. The Millennium scientists are also planning to add infrared imaging capabilities to the center.




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