BOSTON, MA, July 19, 2018 – Invicro LLC, a Konica Minolta company and a leading provider of imaging services and software for research and drug development, announces that a study conducted at Invicro London (formerly Imanova) has been awarded the Alavi-Mandell Publication Award by the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) for the publication entitled, “11C-PBR28 or 18F-PBR111 detect white matter inflammatory heterogeneity in multiple sclerosis”. Dr Gourab Datta, of Imperial College, London is lead author and award recipient. Invicro’s Dr. Eugenii (Ilan) Rabiner, EVP Head of Translational Imaging and Dr. Roger Gunn, EVP of Quantitative Data Sciences are named co-authors.
The Alavi-Mandell Publication Award is given to individuals who are the first author of a paper published in the JNM1 and who make a major contribution to the completion of the work. The objective of this specific study was to assess microglial activation in the brains of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) using positron emission tomography (PET). Invicro collaborated in this work with scientists from the four following institutions: Imperial College London, King’s College London, Institute of Neurology at University College London and University of Siena.
“It was extremely rewarding to collaborate with Gourab Datta and the rest of the scientific team on this project, and an honor to be recognized for our collective research and contributions,” stated Dr. Gunn. “The research showed how inflammation in white matter lesions present in multiple sclerosis can be identified using PET imaging with TSPO radiotracers.”
Dr. Rabiner was also the senior author on work recognized as a finalist for the Ziskind-Somerfeld Research Award for his article, “Hippocampal Neuroinflammation, Functional Connectivity, and Depressive Symptoms in Multiple Sclerosis” 2. This honor is awarded annually by the Society of Biological Psychiatry to recognize outstanding research investigations in biological psychiatry.
“I’m honored for our work to have been given high assessment by the journal Biological Psychiatry, and to have been a finalist of the Ziskind-Somerfeld Research Award,” said Dr. Rabiner. “This work was a great collaboration between the team at Invicro – London, and scientists from Imperial College, London and other institutions. The research clarified the mechanisms underlying psychiatric manifestations of multiple sclerosis.”
The article for which Rabiner received recognition, conducted by the GSK Clinical Imaging Centre (also known as Imanova and now as Invicro-London) with collaboration by Imperial College, London, examined the relationship between molecular markers associated with brain inflammatory pathways (specifically the density of the 18 kDa translocator protein – TSPO) and the pathophysiology of multiple sclerosis. This study demonstrated a relationship between the relative density of the 18 kDa translocator protein in the hippocampus and the severity of depressive symptoms. This pilot study provided the responsiveness of depression to effective control of brain neuroinflammation in some patients.
As senior author, Dr. Rabiner’s article was selected as a Ziskind-Somerfeld Research Award finalist amongst over 200 published research articles from Biological Psychiatry. The article was also one of the 15 highest ranked original investigations, among the archival reports in Biological Psychiatry.
1.“ 11C-PBR28 or 18F-PBR111 detect white matter inflammatory heterogeneity in multiple sclerosis,” JNM, March 16, 2017, Authors: Gourab Datta1, Alessandro Colasanti1,2, Nicola Kalk1, David Owen1, Gregory Scott1, Eugenii A. Rabiner3, Roger N. Gunn1,3, Anne Lingford-Hughes1, Omar Malik1, Olga Ciccarelli4, Richard Nicholas1, Lei Nei5, Marco Battaglini6, Nicola D. Stefano6 and Paul M. Matthews1; Source: http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/58/9/1477.full?sid=fadca850-b599-4ad7-b517-9276346e6c68
2.“Hippocampal Neuroinflammation, Functional Connectivity, and Depressive Symptoms in Multiple Sclerosis” Biological Society, July 1, 2016, Senior Author: Eugenii A. Rabiner; Co-authors: Alessandro Colasanti,Qi Guo, Paolo Giannetti, Matthew B. Wall, Rexford D. Newbould, Courtney Bishop, Mayca Onega, Richard Nicholas, Olga Ciccarelli, Paolo A. Muraro, Omar Malik, David R. Owen, Allan H. Young, Roger N. Gunn, Paola Piccini, Paul M. Matthews; Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.11.022
About Invicro
Headquartered in Boston, MA, Invicro was founded in 2008 with the mission of improving the role and function of imaging in translational drug discovery and development across all therapeutic areas. Invicro’s multi-disciplinary team provides a full range of image informatics, engineering and operational services. Originally focused on imaging in discovery phase, in 2016 Invicro expanded its offering in clinical phase research with the acquisition of Molecular Neuroimaging, LLC, followed by the acquisition of Imanova and CORE Clinical in 2017. Now as part of the Konica Minolta precision medicine organization and with their sister company Ambry Genetics, Invicro develops and leverages the latest approaches in quantitative biomarkers including imaging, quantitative pathology and genomics. The successful integration of the discovery and clinical teams onto Invicro’s industry-leading software informatics platforms, VivoQuant®® and iPACS®, has inspired a strong and growing presence in the pre-clinical to late-phase clinical markets. For more information, visit www.invicro.com.
About Konica Minolta
Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) is a global digital technology company with core strengths in imaging and data analysis, optics, materials, and nano-fabrication. Through innovation, Konica Minolta creates products and digital solutions for the betterment of business and society—today and for generations to come. Across its Business Technologies, Healthcare, and Industrial-facing businesses, the company aspires to be an Integral Value Provider that applies the full range of its expertise to offer comprehensive solutions to the customer’s most pressing problems, works with the partners to ensure the solutions are sustainable, anticipates and addresses tomorrow’s issues, and tailors each solution to meet the unique and specific needs of its valued customers. Leveraging these capabilities, Konica Minolta contributes to productivity improvement and workflow change for its customers, and provides leading-edge service solutions in the IoT era. Headquartered in Tokyo and with operations in more than 50 countries, Konica Minolta has more than 43,000 employees serving approximately two million customers in over 150 countries. Konica Minolta is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, (TSE4902). For further information, visit: https://www.konicaminolta.com/
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Amanda Harrell
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