A ""Hot Topic"" in Drug Discovery

Courtesy of Thermogenic Imaging FEEL THE HEAT? Infrared TSA images capture the thermogenic response of the brain and IBAT to oral glucose and insulin in diabetic and non-diabetic BB-rats. Cellular thermogenesis, or heat production, reflects an amalgamation of physiological functions, including metabolic activities and blood flow. Telltale differences in thermogenic patterns can result when an organism's physiological status changes for any of a variety of reasons, including disease progression, exposure to toxins, or therapeutic intervention. Now Billerica, Mass.-based Thermogenic Imaging is using a technology, originally designed to let soldiers see in the dark, to develop a technique called Thermal Signature Analysis (TSA), which enables researchers to visualize and quantify these thermal profiles in cultured cells and live animals. Comparative TSA studies enable the identification of thermal patterns characteristic of certain phenotypes, disease stages, or responses to drugs or other treatments. Using the technology, scientists can perform noninvasive temperature profiling of live animals as well as cultured cells, with no need for fluorophores, radioactive labels, or reporters. Thermogenic Imaging is confident that TSA technology will facilitate drug discovery and development, and is dedicating most of its initial research and marketing efforts to convincing Big Pharma. The company's growing list of customers already includes some of the larger pharmaceutical companies, and TSA technology also has applications in academia. "A number of academic institutions have applied for grants to purchase our TSA ImagIR technology [to thermally profile small animals] for use in their core animal facilities," notes Steven Chomicz, vice president of sales and marketing at Thermogenic Imaging. "We've essentially introduced a high-tech means of performing what might normally be considered mundane and highly variable laboratory tasks--caliper measurement of tumors or limbs, and indirect calorimetry measurements of small animals," he adds. "But our approach provides an affordable, convenient, and information-rich means of tissue-specific temperature profiling on a large scale, and at very high resolution." NIGHT VISION TO THERMAL VISION The TSA platform employs infrared (IR) imaging technology that was originally developed to provide thermal night-vision capability to the US military's special operations forces. This methodology is possible because an object with a temperature greater than absolute zero emits IR radiation at a level proportional to its temperature. An ultra-sensitive detector senses the IR energy emitted in the relevant portion of the electromagnetic spectrum (3-5 mm) and digitizes that information for subsequent processing to yield a thermal image and to perform temperature calculations. This allows an investigator to observe tissue-specific temperature changes as they occur, in real time. Surface temperatures are displayed in a high-resolution digital image employing a quantitative color map for visual interpretation, with darker and brighter colors corresponding to colder and hotter areas, respectively. Temperature variations as miniscule as 0.07°C can be detected using the TSA ImagIR, and a prototype for the TSA AnalyzIR platform (for imaging cultured cells) offers a resolution of 0.005°C. The TSA ImagIR's temperature-controlled chamber is supplied with an integrated anesthesia-delivery module (ADM) that safely maintains up to eight mice in an anesthetized state for up to three hours, and each anesthesia port has its own flow control knob. An ADM for up to three rats is also available, as well as specialty modules for isolating specific body regions such as limbs. The HeatSeekIR software lets researchers specify an unlimited number of regions of interest (ROIs) of various shapes and sizes for comparison, and flexible caliper tools enable the accurate measurement of ROI dimensions. Thermogenic Imaging is working with a number of groups to investigate the utility of in vivo thermal profiling for a variety of applications, including: phenotyping mouse strains used as models for the study of obesity and diabetes in collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline of Research Triangle Park, NC, and the Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor, Maine; following xenograft tumor progression in mice with Wilmington, Mass.-based Charles River Laboratories; developing an assay for studying sexual dysfunction in a rat model system with Boston University; and exploring the plausibility of thermogenic profiling for monitoring arthritis, inflammation, and sepsis in rat model systems with North Shore Long Island Jewish Research Institute of Manhasset, NY. "TSA technology is new, and many potential applications remain to be explored," says Anthony Trombino, senior manager of Charles River Laboratories' research division. "We have found it very helpful thus far, and are impressed with the quantity and quality of data that can be derived from the images for different types of analyses." --Deborah A. Fitzgerald function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

A ""Hot Topic"" in Drug Discovery

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of