Seminar

Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, March 4, 2013

The Development of PET Techniques to Study the 5HT1A System

Dustin Wooten (student of Dr. Brad Christian)
Research Assistant, Department of Medical Physics, UW-School of Medicine & Public Health, Madison, WI - USA –

The serotonin1A (5-HT1A) system has been implicated in a wide variety of neuropsychiatric disorders. PET imaging provides an excellent method of analyzing 5-HT1A physiology. Measurement of 5-HT1A expression in humans has focused mainly on the composite measure of binding potential (BP). BP is a convenient measurement, however, it is proportional to both receptor density (Bmax) and radioligand-receptor affinity (1/KDapp). The lack of a suitable 18F-labeled 5-HT1A PET ligand makes separate measurements of 5-HT1A Bmax and KDapp more challenging. This presentation will focus on the development and characterization of the 5-HT1A antagonist [18F]mefway for PET assay of the 5-HT1A system laying the ground work for translation into human studies. In addition, results will demonstrate the utility of [18F]mefway for in vivo measurement of Bmax and KDapp indicating separate measurements of Bmax and KDapp are more sensitive to group differences than BP alone.

Location: 1335 (HSLC) Health Sciences Learning Center, 750 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI

Time: 4:00pm-5:00pm