[18F]FMT: a reliable PET tracer for in vivo evaluation of dopaminergic dysfunction in Parkinson’s Disease rat model.

Background: Rat models of Parkinson’s disease (PD), such as lesioned rats with 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), are useful for studying dopamine (DA)-related functions. 6-[18F]fluoro-m-tyrosine (6-[18F]FMT) is an effective PET tracer to evaluate of DA terminals integrity and L-aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AAAD) metabolic pathway. However, there are currently no available quantitative PET studies using [18F]FMT in 6-OHDA lesioned rats. In this context, we investigated the feasibility of in vivo PET study using [18F]FMT on 6-OHDA PD’s model.

Methods: 10 µg of 6-OHDA were injected into the right medial forebrain bundle (MFB) of male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=8). As control, sham-treated rats (n=8) were injected with vehicle only but otherwise treated identically. Striatal DA presynaptic activity was assessed by dynamic [18F]FMT PET, 30 min after benserazide pretreatment. Structural T2-weighted brain images were acquired on a 9.4T MRI and were used for co-registration. After normalization on a MRI template, kinetic analysis was performed by “Patlak Reference” model, using PMOD software.

Results: Striatal accumulation of [18F]FMT was observed in rats pretreated with benserazide, a peripheral AAAD inhibitor. As consequence of the 6-OHDA-lesion, significant decrease of [18F]FMT accumulation was recorded in the striatum ipsilateral to the lesion. Lesioned rats had dramatically reduced uptake constant Ki in the ipsilateral striatum compared to the contralateral striatum (p<0.001) and to the ipsilateral striatum of sham-treated rats (p<0.005). The Ki ratio (Ipsi./Contra.) was equivalent to 94% in the sham group and dropped to 41% in the lesioned group.

Conclusions: [18F]FMT PET enables us to quantify loss of DA presynaptic function in unilaterally 6-OHDA lesioned rats. These results encourage us to pursue further investigations in a longitudinal way and to monitor the progression of the dopaminergic dysfunction in more moderate and gradual preclinical PD models.