A collection of researchers led by Penn Medicine are developing what they believe could be a game-changing new tool to detect Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases.
The group hopes to create a specialized type of PET scan that can detect the early markers of the disease and its progression, which could prove critical in creating new treatments. “Center Without Walls”—which also includes Washington University-St. Louis, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of California-San Francisco and Yale—is fueled by a $20 million grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Their success could be a turning point for the diagnostic field, researchers believe.
“That would be a true paradigm shift in the way we develop molecular imaging probes to study neurological disease,” Robert Mach, PhD, the Britton Chance Professor of Radiology at Penn Medicine, said in a statement.
Parkinson’s currently affects about 10 million individuals worldwide and 500,000 in the U.S. However, there is not a single test available to diagnose it, and oftentimes doctors can miss the progressive nervous system disorder until symptoms worsen. Pinpointing an imaging biomarker or disease-process indicator could help clinicians diagnose Parkinson’s earlier, before the brain is irreversibly damaged.
Center Without Walls hopes it can find that critical diagnostic tool over the next five years. They’ll work to develop two radiotracers during this process that bind to different proteins in the brain. Up to this point, locating the compounds that connect to alpha-synuclein and 4R tau has been monumentally challenging, experts noted.
“Finding a needle in a haystack is much easier when you have a machine made to find needles," study co-investigator Andrew Siderowf, MD, the Hurtig-Stern Professor of Neurology at Penn, said in the statement.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.