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

Up to date on seventeen July 2020

The EU-funded CONQUER challenge focused on enhancing and expanding the flexibility of distinction agents. These are substances that can be administered prior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to more plainly and specifically distinguish diverse tissues and fluids in the body: from muscle mass, cartilage and nerves to most cancers tumours and the movement of blood by means of arteries, veins and the mind.

The technological know-how is indispensable for comprehending and diagnosing illness as effectively as developing new remedies. Nevertheless, the use of distinction mechanisms in MRI scans has been constrained simply because of time and price tag things, as effectively as issues about publicity to some agents such as these primarily based on the scarce-earth aspect gadolinium.

The CONQUER staff for that reason sought far better and smarter choices, including distinction agents that can be turned on or off remotely by adjusting magnetic fields in buy to make scans of diverse tissues more exact and versatile.

‘We have furnished a proof of principle for a new distinction mechanism that provides two advantages. We now have the potential to change the distinction on and off, and we use an option agent to gadolinium about which there is open discussion all over potential toxicity troubles,’ claims challenge coordinator Hermann Scharfetter at Graz College of Technological innovation in Austria.

The CONQUER team’s research focused on a versatile distinction technique identified as ‘quadrupole peace enhancement’ which operates on the basis of how signals created by the spins of protons within tissues decay, or ‘relax’, in excess of time as they interact with the distinction agent. Instead of gadolinium-primarily based substances, the CONQUER staff applied novel bismuth-primarily based agents.

‘We have verified for the very first time that quadrupole peace enhancement of solvent protons by the spin of bismuth nuclei is attainable in liquids. This opens up novel avenues for even more research in this area,’ Scharfetter claims.

To help the use of new distinction agents, the challenge partners also produced new instruments for MRI scanners, including novel elements that have been fitted experimentally to a medical 3T MRI scanner, and which have resulted in a patent application.

Scharfetter and his staff are continuing research in the area with new initiatives in the pipeline, driving ahead promising regions of study focused in specific on optimising nanoparticles in novel distinction agents. This ongoing perform could substantially greatly enhance the means of MRI technological know-how to produce a deeper comprehending of illness and even more productive and correct diagnoses for people.