By Nanoxort LLC
To improve the diagnostic accuracy of MRI, patients are often injected with a gadolinium-based contrast agent (GBCA) to enhance image contrast and clarity. Due to gadolinium’s inherent toxicity, GBCAs are designed to be rapidly removed from circulation. This leaves a short window of time for image acquisition, yielding sub-optimum imaging of blood vessels and reduced diagnostic accuracy of vascular disease. There is an urgent need for new contrast agents able to provide enhanced imaging capabilities without the safety concerns. To address the need for a safer contrast agent that provides enhanced vascular imaging, this project will develop an iron-based blood pool contrast agent (i.e. one that remains in blood vessels), enabling an extended imaging window for improved vascular imaging in magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), but which is then cleared by kidney filtration (minimizing tissue accumulation).
