In psychiatry, neuroimaging facilitates the diagnosis of psychiatric diseases and the development of new medications. It is used to detect structural lesions causing psychosis and to differentiate depression from neurodegenerative disorders or brain tumors. Armed with years’ experience in psychiatric disease research, Creative Biolabs has established advanced platforms for imaging to support disease research. Researchers have several options in methods for imaging, from phase-contrast microscopy that shows intact cells to fluorescent imaging of single molecules or organelles. Whether the demand is for a high-content and high-throughput or a simple-to-use system, our imaging solutions can accommodate acquisition and analysis that suit the needs of a screening or research lab.
Imaging Techniques
Unlike many neurological disorders, psychiatric disorders do not cause changes visible to the naked eye in the neuroimaging study of the individual patient. However, they are amenable to investigation by neuroimaging modalities, such as quantitative structural imaging, functional neuroimaging using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques, positron emission tomography (PET), and single photon emission tomography (SPECT). Neuroimaging findings in two or more genetic variants of the population are compared to discover imaging endophenotypes that may be amenable to measurement, and thus, useful as biomarkers in therapeutic discovery.
Autoradiography has been indispensable in identifying and mapping receptor sites, and invaluable in clarifying selective affinities and pharmacological properties of specific receptors. High sensitivity and resolution are major advantages of autoradiography. Quantitative autoradiography (QAR) technique is normally used to determine the quantity of radioactive-labeled test compounds in a specified brain region. QAR allows both receptor distribution and binding constants to be determined in the same tissue sample. For instance, a number of homogenate receptor binding studies have postulated that dopaminergic dysfunction in schizophrenia may be related to abnormalities in dopamine receptors. In a recent study, postmortem striatal specimens from patients with schizophrenia, normal controls, and psychiatric controls that had received neuroleptics were studied with quantitative autoradiography for dopamine receptors.
Histochemistry is a combination of chemistry and histology, in which reactions are carried out on tissue sections or similar preparations and the results examined under a microscope, with the object of combining the advantages of chemical or biochemical specificity and histological localization. Antibodies are used to investigate the histological localization of the specific receptor in normal and diseased human tissues/organs by immunocytochemistry.
Four of the most common types of brain scans are electroencephalography (EEG), PET, MRI and fMRI. The fMRI is a series of MRIs that measures both the structure and the functional activity of the brain through computer adaptation of multiple images. In the past forty years, a substantial number of structural brain imaging studies have been published on schizophrenia. They have helped to identify a pattern of structural abnormalities that differ from Alzheimer disease and other psychotic illnesses.
Cell-based imaging technology provides an essential visual and quantitative tool to interrogate the pharmacological and toxicological effects of various types of perturbations to cells. The integrated usage of the automated cell-based imaging technology in drug discovery should enable the efficient design and selection of drug candidates with broader therapeutic indexes. Some major applications of cellular imaging in psychiatric disease drug studies include the differentiation of apoptosis and necrosis, the micronucleus test, oxidative stress, and so forth.
Fig.1 The multi-step process of cell-based imaging.
Neuroimaging is being increasingly applied in the research of psychiatric therapies. It enables the scientists to test whether a potential drug target is abnormal in a psychiatric disorder and whether its correction may be therapeutic. Work with Creative Biolabs scientists to perform custom imaging assays. For more information, please feel free to contact us.
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