Zhude Tu
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research
Inflammation inside the brain and spinal cord drives diseases such as Parkinson disease and multiple sclerosis, but doctors have few ways to see or measure it in a living person. This work builds imaging agents for positron emission tomography (PET), a scan that tracks tiny amounts of a radioactive tracer as it binds its target in the body.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Chemistry
Neuroscience
- Topics
positron emission tomography
PET imaging
radiotracer
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Track S1PR1 levels over time in macaques with MPTP-induced brain injury using [11C]CS1P1 PET, then verify the scans with autoradiography, antibody staining and ELISA protein assays on brain tissue.
- Test whether [11C]CS1P1 PET detects higher S1PR1 levels, a sign of neuroinflammation, in the brains of Parkinson disease patients than in healthy controls, and confirm this in banked postmortem brain tissue.
- Identify the most promising fluorine-18-labeled S1PR1 tracer from newly synthesized candidates and move it into human investigation as a longer-lasting alternative to [11C]CS1P1.
- Run PET imaging studies with the new fluorine-18 S1PR1 tracer in healthy volunteers and multiple sclerosis patients to measure neuroinflammation in the brain.
- Design and synthesize new molecules that bind S1PR2, test how strongly and selectively they bind, and label the best ones with carbon-11 or fluorine-18 for PET imaging.
- Evaluate S1PR2 radiotracers in rodent models of multiple sclerosis and bladder cancer, then image the brain and analyze tracer breakdown products in nonhuman primates.
More about the research
The targets are sphingosine-1-phosphate receptors (S1PRs), proteins on immune, blood vessel and brain cells that respond to a fat-derived signaling molecule and help steer inflammation. The projects span designing new tracer molecules, testing them in animals, and moving the best ones into human studies.
Why it matters
Parkinson disease affects an estimated 4–10 million people worldwide, and about 450,000 people in the United States have multiple sclerosis. A PET scan that measures brain inflammation could serve as a biomarker to help diagnose these diseases, track their progression, and judge whether anti-inflammatory or S1PR1-targeting drugs are working. An S1PR2 tracer could also help with MS and bladder cancer, where S1PR2 may serve as a biomarker.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Investigate neuroinflammation in the brain of PD using S1P1 radioligands
NIH · Feb 2024 – Jan 2029
Development of PET radiotracer for imaging sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor 2 (S1PR2)
NIH · Sep 2018 – Jul 2028
PET Sphingosine-1-Phosphate Receptor 1 (S1P1) radiotracer for inflammation response in multiple sclerosis
NIH · Sep 2017 – May 2028
Closest labs
Nashaat Turkman
Stony Brook University, NY·Neuroscience
Optimize and automate the radiosynthesis of [18F]NT311D, a radioactive tracer that binds class-IIa HDAC enzymes, and test it with PET imaging in rats.
Robert Van Dam
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Chemistry
Integrate in situ radiation detectors into droplet-array radiochemistry platforms to measure radioactivity at different stages of each parallel reaction.
Yasmin Zakiniaeiz
Yale University, CT·Neuroscience·Early-career
Measure baseline dopamine D2/3 receptor levels in the prefrontal cortex of men and women with alcohol use disorder and sex-matched controls, using PET imaging with the radiotracer [11C]FLB457.
The school
Washington University in St Louis: 97 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 365 research doctorates a year.
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