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

Up-to-date on 17 July 2020

The EU-funded CONQUER challenge concentrated on improving and growing the versatility of contrast brokers. These are substances that can be administered prior to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to additional plainly and precisely distinguish different tissues and fluids in the system: from muscle mass, cartilage and nerves to cancer tumours and the movement of blood via arteries, veins and the mind.

The technology is indispensable for being familiar with and diagnosing sickness as properly as developing new remedies. Nevertheless, the use of contrast mechanisms in MRI scans has been minimal simply because of time and charge elements, as properly as considerations about publicity to some brokers these kinds of as these centered on the rare-earth factor gadolinium.

The CONQUER crew therefore sought superior and smarter possibilities, together with contrast brokers that can be turned on or off remotely by altering magnetic fields in order to make scans of different tissues additional exact and flexible.

‘We have furnished a evidence of theory for a new contrast mechanism that features two pros. We now have the opportunity to swap the contrast on and off, and we use an alternate agent to gadolinium about which there is open up debate about opportunity toxicity troubles,’ suggests challenge coordinator Hermann Scharfetter at Graz College of Technologies in Austria.

The CONQUER team’s exploration concentrated on a flexible contrast strategy termed ‘quadrupole rest enhancement’ which will work on the basis of how indicators created by the spins of protons inside of tissues decay, or ‘relax’, around time as they interact with the contrast agent. In its place of gadolinium-centered substances, the CONQUER crew utilized novel bismuth-centered brokers.

‘We have established for the very first time that quadrupole rest improvement of solvent protons by the spin of bismuth nuclei is achievable in liquids. This opens up novel avenues for more exploration in this location,’ Scharfetter suggests.

To assistance the use of new contrast brokers, the challenge companions also produced new instruments for MRI scanners, together with novel parts that have been equipped experimentally to a medical 3T MRI scanner, and which have resulted in a patent software.

Scharfetter and his crew are continuing exploration in the location with new initiatives in the pipeline, driving ahead promising places of research concentrated in certain on optimising nanoparticles in novel contrast brokers. This ongoing operate could significantly enrich the means of MRI technology to generate a further being familiar with of sickness and even additional effective and correct diagnoses for people.