Medical News Observer

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a chemical compound, named Fluselenamyl, that detects amyloid clumps better than current FDA-approved compounds. If a radioactive atom is incorporated into the compound, its location in a living brain can be monitored using positron emission tomography (PET) scans. The compound, described in a paper published Nature Scientific Reports, potentially could be used in brain scans to identify the signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s disease or to monitor response to treatment.

“Fluselenamyl is both more sensitive and likely more specific than current agents,” said Vijay Sharma, PhD, a professor of radiology, of neurology and of biomedical engineering, and the study’s senior author. “Using this compound, I think we can reduce false negatives, potentially do a better job of identifying people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease and assess the effects of treatments.”

Brain PET scan images after use of Fluselenamyl clearly showing amyloid plaques. Credit: Ping Yan and Jin-Moo Lee

Amyloid plaques are one of the most telltale findings in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid plaques can be either diffuse or compact. The compact kind has long been associated with the disease, but conventional wisdom has held that diffuse plaques are benign, since they can be found in the brains of elderly people without any symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, as well as the brains of those with Alzheimer’s. Sharma believes that diffuse plaques may mark the earliest stages of the disease.

To determine whether Fluselenamyl can detect plaques in the brain, the researchers used the compound to stain brain slices from people who had died of Alzheimer’s disease and, as controls, people of similar ages who had died of other causes. The brain slices from the Alzheimer’s patients, but not the controls, were identified as containing plaques.

When a radioactive atom was incorporated into the compound, the researchers found very little interaction between Fluselenamyl and the healthy white matter in the human brain slices. “A huge obstacle with existing state-of-the-art PET agents approved for plaque detection is that they tend to bind indiscriminately to the brain’s white matter, which creates false positives on the scans,” Sharma said. Nonspecific binding to other parts of the brain creates “noise,” which makes it difficult to distinguish samples with plaques from those without.

A similar experiment comparing mice genetically predisposed to develop amyloid plaques with normal control mice showed the same pattern of high sensitivity for amyloid beta and low binding to healthy white matter. Furthermore, Sharma and colleagues showed that when Fluselenamyl with the radioactive atom is injected intravenously into mice, the compound can cross the blood-brain barrier, bind to any plaques in their brains and be detected by PET scan. In mice without plaques, the compound is quickly flushed from the brain and then excreted from the body.

The next step is to move to testing in patients. Sharma already has submitted an application to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a phase 0 trial, to establish whether Fluselenamyl is safe for use in humans and behaves in the human body the same way it behaves in mice.

Citation: Sundaram GSM, Dhavale DD, Prior JL, Yan P, Cirrito J, Rath NP, Laforest R, Cairns NJ, Lee J-M, Kotzbauer PT, Sharma V. Fluselenamyl: A Novel Benzoselenazole Derivative for PET Detection of Amyloid Plaques (Aβ) in Alzheimer’s Disease. Scientific Reports. Nov. 2, 2016.
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Research funding: National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation
Adapted from press release by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis