Grant: Proof of Principle Program - Phase I

Diagnosing metabolic bone disease at an early stage plays a vital role in the success of treatment and management of diseases such as Osteoporosis, Paget's disease, Osteoarthritis, and the accurate diagnosis of overuse bone shin splints, or even metastatic bone cancers. Bone turnover is routinely imaged clinically using nuclear medicine 99m-Technetium medronate bone scans, but the patient is exposed to ionizing radiation and the resulting scan images show very poor spatial resolution. On the other hand, if an imaging tracer of bone turnover was visualized under MRI, then a single scan would provide significantly improved spatial resolution, zero exposure to ioinizing radiation, and the opportunity to image both soft tissue and the pattern of bone remodeling at the same clinical sitting. We have developed a bone-targeting contrast agent for visualization under MRI, by coupling bone-targeting bisphosphonate (BP) drugs to superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (BP-SPION). We have shown this imaging tracer will localize at sites of dynamic bone turnover and can be used with non-invasive MRI imaging to highlight adaptive bone pathology in animal models of bone disease, without the need for ionizing radiation.