Technologies

Many groups worldwide have endeavored to detect and quantify microglial activiation with imaging in order to understand a variety of neuropsychiatric diseases, ranging from HIV dementia to schizophrenia all of which have a prominent neuroinflammatory component. Within the central nervous system (CNS), fractalkine receptor, a.k.a., CX3CR1, is the only known microglia-specific target indicated in neuroinflammation, and it happens to be a readily accessible receptor. In the periphery, CX3CR1 also plays important roles in inflammatory diseases, cell migration and adhesion. The CX3CR1 specific Low-molecular-weight (LMW) radiotracers we reported here would expect to have broad utility, especially for brain imaging, and provide unprecedented and specific information for the detection and treatment of inflammatory diseases.