In vivo zinc imaging (PET scanning; Washington Univ.)
NutrienTech LLC has filed an SBIR grant application to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop positron emission tomography (PET) scanning techniques, to visualize changes in the regional distribution of zinc in specific tissues. This work is being done in collaboration with the Department of Radiological Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. PET scanning involves a high-energy positron emitting probe that can be measured and quantitated in live animals in real-time. The most important feature of PET nuclides is that their emissions are very short-lived (i.e., on the order of minutes to hours), permitting very high-quality images to be created in a short time, without lingering radiation exposure to the subject. Consequently, these PET scanning techniques not only serve to demonstrate proof-of-principle for cause-and-effect studies for the involvement of zinc in disease processes in laboratory settings, but also will be used in later human clinical studies to demonstrate efficacy for various therapies that are being developed and tested in human volunteers. Funding for these studies are pending.
NutrienTech LLC
