Coast to Coast

We were thrilled this year to announce that Mediso USA reached a major milestone with the establishment of its tenth preclinical nanoScan imaging system in North America. We are looking back this holiday season with so much appreciation for all of you in making this possible.

Teaming Up

It was a great honor to have our first site in North America designated as a Center of Excellence for Preclinical Imaging. Many thanks to the Center for Quantitative Cancer Imaging team at the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI), part of the University of Utah Health Care system in Salt Lake City. We look forward to continuing our partnership into the New Year.

State of the Art

With its nanoScan PET/MRI(3T) installations dotting the globe, Mediso accepts only the best in imaging performance. As such, the nanoScan PET/MRI(3T) system features a 3T translational MR field strength combined with exceptional PET performance in a compact cryogen-free and low fringe field design, guarantying low running costs and an easy-to-use workflow.

Up and Coming

Our team is also looking forward to a major advance on our horizon. We are proud to say that 2016 will feature our first MultiScan LFER 150 PET/CT installation in the U.S. The large bore in-vivo imaging system is tuned for translational research, capable of whole-body NHP imaging. Time to plan those F220 replacements!

Starting from April 29 the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now accepting applications for the Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program and the High End Instrument Grant (HEI) Program.

The submission deadline is May 29, 2015.

The objective of these programs is to make available to institutions expensive, commercially available research systems that cost at least $50,000 (SIG Program) or at least $600,000 (HEI Program). The maximum award is $600,000 for the SIG program and $2,000,000 for the HEI Program. 

The instruments can only be justified on a shared-use basis and that are needed for NIH-supported projects in basic, translational or clinical areas of biomedical/behavioral research (description from nih.gov). The SIG Program provides funds to purchase or upgrade a single item of expensive, specialized, commercially available instrument or an integrated instrumentation system to be used for research purposes only. To promote cost effectiveness, to encourage optimal sharing among individual investigators, research groups and departments, and to foster a collaborative multidisciplinary environment, the instrument should be integrated in a centralized core facility, whenever possible.

We, Mediso USA provide support to submit a successful instrumentation grant and we are committed to supporting you throughout the grant process. Please contact us for more details.

External Links

• Shared Instrumentation Grant (SIG) Program (S10): http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-15-088.html
• High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program (S10): http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-15-118.html

This article was published in discovered, The HZDR Research Magazine (Issue 02.2013, December 2013/January 2014, ISSN: 2194-5713; PDF 2.2MB)

Six white CD-1 mice are scurrying through the litter in their cage, climbing the metal bars, nibbling away at the pellets they are being fed, and snuggling with each other. What they don't yet know is they're about to participate in a pivotal study. One that will save lives - those of mice and, one day, of men. As part of his dissertation, Mathias Kranz, Ph.D. student at the HZDR Research Site Leipzig, is currently investigating the degree of radioactivity that builds up within the bodies of mice whenever radioactive probes - called radiotracers - are used, and identifying in which organs specifically it accumulates. Eventually, these data will be extrapolated to the human magnitude. Radiotracers are chemical compounds that include a radioactive element of some sort, which can help scientists observe metabolic processes in living organisms.

Specifically, in the case of the Leipzig project, we're talking about the two radiotracers [18F]fluspidine and [18F]flubatine - both of them molecules containing the radionuclide 18F (fluorine). They're supposed to ultimately find their way into the diagnostics of cancers and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. Key is their ability to imitate properties of various endogenous structures.

Before a radioactive probe is ready for use in the hospital setting, its efficacy and safety must first be documented in living organisms.

Once injected into the human body, they bind with high affinity to certain targets - in the case of the "PET sugar" [18F]FDG, which is also used at the Leipzig site, highly metabolically active tissues like tumors. The emitted radiation from the radioactive molecules can be captured and subsequently analyzed using positron emission tomography (PET). However, before a radioactive tracer can be introduced into the hospital setting, its efficacy and safety to the living organism must first be confirmed. This is a prerequisite imposed by the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) and the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfarM). This multistep procedure starts with work on mice and occasionally pigs and ultimately leads to research conducted on healthy human subjects. Here, the HZDR scientists are receiving support from their colleagues at the Clinic for Nuclear Medicine at Leipzig University Hospital.

Leipzig as reference site

As of spring 2013, when operations by experienced colleagues at the HZDR main site Dresden first commenced, Germany's first-ever commercial full-body PET/MRI for small animals opened in Leipzig - one of only a few worldwide. The HZDR is the reference site for Hungarian manufacturer Mediso (Budapest) - which brings with it a number of obvious benefits: "There are still a handful of delayed-onset childhood illnesses but whenever we do report any problem, help typically arrives within a matter of hours," Mathias Kranz explains. The 27-year-old fellow, who holds a master's in engineering, studied biomedical technology at Ilmenau University of Technology, and has been working at the HZDR Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research for about a year now. He is thrilled with the new device: "Not only does it allow us to obtain information about metabolic processes that are happening inside the body, it also yields high-resolution three-dimensional images that document the exact location and distribution of soft tissues." especially when it comes to brain imaging, MR devices yield far better results than conventional PET and computer tomography (CT) combinations.

The mice remain safe

"Without these methods, we would need to dissect the animal subjects, remove individual organs, and then measure them in order to determine the degree of radioactivity that has accumulated in the body following injection of the radiotracer. What's interesting is not only the current dose rate but also how it changes over the course of minutes and hours, which helps determine the organ dose. Thanks to PET/MRI, we're able to conduct even long-term studies using the same exact mouse," Mathias Kranz explains. In the case of other methods, one laboratory animal has to be sacrificed each time a single measurement is obtained.

During examination, the mice are lying on a heated animal bed, their breathing monitored with the help of a pressure sensor. The radioactively labeled substance is injected into the tail vein. The mice are fully anesthetized and won't remember anything afterwards. On a screen, Mathias Kranz is now examining a black and grey image showing the inside of the mouse's body. Red, yellow, and blue spots are lighting up in certain body regions. "Red means these are sites where there is a high degree of radioactivity, in other words that a lot of our substance was deposited in these places," the young scientist explains. At first glance, the liver, kidneys, and bladder are easily recognized - organs, which are actively involved in the substance's elimination from the body.

After the experiments are done, Mathias Kranz calculates the expected effective human dose. This serves as a risk-assessment at the time of introducing the probes into the clinical setting. Based on their results, the researchers have filed for approval of a study with the BfS for use of their newly developed radiotracers (+)-[18F]flubatine and (S)-(-)-[18F]fluspidine in humans. The scientists are working closely with their colleagues at Leipzig University Hospital, Department of Nuclear Medicine, on these projects. The projected start date is early 2014.

A New Spin on the Story of AnyScan

as illustrated by Gergo P.

Lego bricks give the limitless possibilities represented by an unassembled pile.  You can build just about anything out of LEGOs these day if you've got the patience and enough bricks. 

And this happened with the AnyScan product family of Mediso as Gergo, one of our magnificent physicists (a clear magician in GATE Monte Carlo simulations) created his own slightly greater-than-minifig-scale of the Mediso AnyScan PET-SPECT-CT clinical tomographic scanner.

The album can be reached on Flickr.

And the fun part is that the AnyScan S, single-head and dual-head large field-of-view general purpose SPECT camera just received the FDA 510(k) clearance, bringing this great medical device to the US market.

The AnyScan® S is a proven 4th generation system with installations around the world, and offers a unique solution in molecular imaging with an ergonomic open design gantry, variable angle detector positions, small footprint, robust mechanical design with improved safety factor, dual infrared line auto body contouring, total body localizer mode, table design to support patients up to 500 lbs., and pre-programmed robotic gantry motions with full automatic motion positioning and calibration. In addition, the flexible modular system architecture provides a pathway to offer variety of modalities within the AnyScan® family.