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Background: Microtubules are abundant in brain and their malfunctioning occurs in the early-to-advanced stages of neurodegenerative disorders. At present, there is no in vivo test available for a definitive diagnosis of most of the neurodegenerative disorders. Herein, we present the microPET imaging of microtubules using our recently reported Positron Emission Tomography (PET) tracer, [ 11 C]MPC-6827, in transgenic mice models of tau pathology (rTg4510) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathology (SOD1*G93A) and compared to corresponding age-matched controls., Methods: Automated synthesis of [ 11 C]MPC-6827 was achieved in a GE-FX2MeI/FX2M radiochemistry module. In vivo PET imaging studies of [ 11 C]MPC-6827 (3.7 ± 0.8 MBq) were performed in rTg4510 and SOD1*G93A mice groups and their corresponding littermates (n = 5 per group). Dynamic PET images were acquired using a microPET Inveon system (Siemens, Germany) at 55 min for rTg4510 and 30 min for SOD1*G93A and corresponding controls. PET images were reconstructed using the 3D-OSEM algorithm and analyzed using VivoQuant version 4 (Invicro, MA). Tracer uptake in ROIs that included whole brain was measured as %ID/g over time to generate standardized uptake values (SUV) and time-activity curves (TACs)., Results: [ 11 C]MPC-6827 exhibit a trend of lower tracer binding in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease (tau pathology, line rTg4510) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (line SOD1*G93A) compared to wild-type littermates., Conclusions: Our finding indicates a trend of loss of microtubule binding of [ 11 C]MPC-6827 in the whole brain of AD and ALS transgenic mice models compared to control mice. The pilot studies described herein show that [ 11 C]MPC-6827 could be used as a PET ligand for preclinical and human brain imaging of Alzheimer's disease, ALS, and other neurodegenerative diseases. Preclinical Evaluation of a Microtubule PET Ligand [ 11 C]MPC-6827 in Tau and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Animal Models. J. S. Dileep Kumar, Andrei Molotkov, Jongho Kim, Patrick Carberry, Sidney Idumonyi, John Castrillon, Karen Duff, Neil A. Shneider, Akiva Mintz., (© 2022. The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Maj Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences.)

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary adult brain malignancy with an extremely poor prognosis and a median survival of fewer than two years. A key reason for this high mortality is that the blood-brain barrier (BBB) significantly restricts systemically delivered therapeutics to brain tumors. High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) with microbubbles is a methodology being used in clinical trials to noninvasively permeabilize the BBB for systemic therapeutic delivery to GBM. Topotecan is a topoisomerase inhibitor used as a chemotherapeutic agent to treat ovarian and small cell lung cancer. Studies have suggested that topotecan can cross the BBB and can be used to treat brain metastases. However, pharmacokinetic data demonstrated that topotecan peak concentration in the brain extracellular fluid after systemic injection was ten times lower than in the blood, suggesting less than optimal BBB penetration by topotecan. We hypothesize that HIFU with microbubbles treatment can open the BBB and significantly increase topotecan concentration in the brain. We radiolabeled topotecan with 11 C and acquired static and dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) scans to quantify [ 11 C] topotecan uptake in the brains of normal mice and mice after HIFU treatment. We found that HIFU treatments significantly increased [ 11 C] topotecan brain uptake. Moreover, kinetic analysis of the [ 11 C] topotecan dynamic PET data demonstrated a substantial increase in [ 11 C] topotecan volume of distribution in the brain. Furthermore, we found a decrease in [ 11 C] topotecan brain clearance, confirming the potential of HIFU to aid in the delivery of topotecan through the BBB. This opens the potential clinical application of [ 11 C] topotecan as a tool to predict topotecan loco-regional brain concentration in patients with GBMs undergoing experimental HIFU treatments.