APEC Seminar (Astronomy - Particle Physics - Experimental Physics - Cosmology)

Speaker: Hiroshi Mizuma (RIKEN-BDR)
Title: Brain PET imaging in awake mice and its application to human disease models
Date (JST): Thu, Jun 21, 2018, 13:30 - 14:30
Place: Seminar Room A
Related File: 2109.pdf
Abstract: Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging scanner which enables to visualize the biological function of targeted molecules using various radiotracers labeled with a positron (b+) emitter (e.g., carbon-11, fluorine-18, and copper-64). Indeed, clinical PET imaging is mainly contributed to the diagnosis, therapy, and drug development for cancer. In brain studies, PET imaging techniques are also quite useful to explore neuropathological causes and functional neural network under the living state, although the cause of brain disease has been mainly evaluated by the postmortem brain tissue.

Experimental animals are helpful for investigating the pathophysiological states associated with various kinds of human diseases. However, unlike human PET study, the animal is generally necessary to conduct the sedated condition with anesthesia to restrict their body movements, which resulted in reduced neural activities and metabolism. Therefore, an appropriate method of PET imaging under the awake condition is important for understanding in vivo physiological function. Recently, we have established a novel brain PET imaging method for a mouse under awake condition.

In this seminar, I will introduce brain PET imaging in several genetically modified mice as neurological disorder models (e.g. dementia and autistic spectrum disorder) and our other PET studies.