New Radiotracer Offers Opportunities for Earlier Intervention after Heart Attack
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Insights into how the heart recovers after myocardial infarction (heart attack) can be obtained with a new radiotracer that targets fibroblast activity prior to it causing permanent damage. According to research published in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 68Ga-FAPI-04 positron emission tomography (PET) can effectively image fibroblast activation after myocardial infarction, identifying a time window during which cardiac fibrosis can be prevented and the disease course altered.
After a heart attack, fibroblasts play an important role in tissue replacement, preserving the structural integrity of the heart. However, excessive fibrosis can lead to increased left ventricle stiffness and decreased cardiac contraction. As heart failure remains a major source of late morbidity and mortality after a heart attack, study authors sought to evaluate the feasibility of imaging activated fibroblasts after myocardial infarction using a novel 68Ga-labeled fibroblast activation protein (FAP) inhibitor.
"We know that the temporospatial presence of activated fibroblasts in the injured myocardium predicts the quality of cardiac remodeling after a heart attack," noted Zohreh Varasteh, PhD, research fellow at Klinikum rechts der Isar der TUM in Munich, Germany. "Therefore, imaging of activated fibroblasts using 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET may have significant diagnostic and prognostic value, which could aid in the clinical management of patients after myocardial infarction."
[...] "While preclinical development of potential anti-fibrotic approaches is far advanced, there has been little clinical validation due to the lack of sensitive and specific imaging technologies for assessing cardiac fibrosis progression or regression. In this regard, 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET has emerged as an important tool for the detection of fibrotic processes in the efforts to improve heart failure therapy," Varasteh said.
Varasteh continued, "In the future, these advances in imaging may also be applied to other conditions associated with the activation of fibroblasts, such as hypertension, ischemic, dilated and hypertrophic cardiomyopathies, cancer therapy-related cardiotoxicity, liver cirrhosis and pulmonary fibrosis."
Journal Reference:
Zohreh Varasteh, Sarajo Mohanta, Stephanie Robu, Miriam Braeuer, Yuanfang Li, Negar Omidvari, Geoffrey Topping, Ting Sun, Stephan G. Nekolla, Antonia Richter, Christian Weber, Andreas Habenicht, Uwe A. Haberkorn, Wolfgang A. Weber. Molecular Imaging of Fibroblast Activity After Myocardial Infarction Using a 68Ga-Labeled Fibroblast Activation Protein Inhibitor, FAPI-04. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 2019; 60 (12): 1743 DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.119.226993
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