Innovative contrast agents for more… – Information Centre – Research & Innovation

Up to date on seventeen July 2020

The EU-funded CONQUER project targeted on maximizing and growing the versatility of contrast brokers. These are substances that can be administered prior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to much more obviously and exactly distinguish different tissues and fluids in the body: from muscle mass, cartilage and nerves to cancer tumours and the movement of blood through arteries, veins and the brain.

The technological know-how is indispensable for knowledge and diagnosing disease as well as creating new treatment plans. On the other hand, the use of contrast mechanisms in MRI scans has been limited mainly because of time and charge aspects, as well as concerns about exposure to some brokers these kinds of as individuals based on the rare-earth element gadolinium.

The CONQUER workforce as a result sought superior and smarter possibilities, like contrast brokers that can be turned on or off remotely by adjusting magnetic fields in order to make scans of different tissues much more precise and adaptable.

‘We have provided a evidence of basic principle for a new contrast system that gives two positive aspects. We now have the likely to switch the contrast on and off, and we use an alternate agent to gadolinium about which there is open discussion all around likely toxicity issues,’ states project coordinator Hermann Scharfetter at Graz College of Technological know-how in Austria.

The CONQUER team’s exploration targeted on a adaptable contrast approach called ‘quadrupole relaxation enhancement’ which is effective on the foundation of how signals produced by the spins of protons inside tissues decay, or ‘relax’, above time as they interact with the contrast agent. As an alternative of gadolinium-based substances, the CONQUER workforce used novel bismuth-based brokers.

‘We have tested for the first time that quadrupole relaxation improvement of solvent protons by the spin of bismuth nuclei is probable in liquids. This opens up novel avenues for additional exploration in this location,’ Scharfetter states.

To assistance the use of new contrast brokers, the project associates also produced new tools for MRI scanners, like novel elements that have been fitted experimentally to a scientific 3T MRI scanner, and which have resulted in a patent application.

Scharfetter and his workforce are continuing exploration in the location with new initiatives in the pipeline, driving ahead promising areas of review targeted in distinct on optimising nanoparticles in novel contrast brokers. This ongoing do the job could noticeably improve the capability of MRI technological know-how to create a further knowledge of disease and even much more productive and accurate diagnoses for patients.