With funding from the A-T Children’s Project and the Australian-based BrAshA-T organization, a team of researchers in Australia is using neuroimaging technology to learn more about abnormal circuitry and inflammation in the brains of A-T patients, possibly providing clues for therapeutic targets and uncovering imaging biomarkers for use in clinical trials.
Stephen Rose, PhD, Kate Sinclair, MD and Martin Lavin, PhD from the University of Queensland and Royal Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, Australia will work together on a grant entitled, “Investigating connectivity and neuroinflammation within corticomotor networks in A-T: Improving our understanding of the clinical phenotype.” Their study will recruit up to 20 patients with A-T and 20 age-matched, healthy controls from the Australian A-T Clinic as well as the New Zealand and Oceanic regions.
Dr. Rose and his team are using diffusion MRI (dMRI) for the analysis of brain circuitry and PET scans to detect the presence of brain inflammation. Combined, the two technologies may provide important imaging markers for evaluating both disease progression in A-T and new drug interventions that may slow or stop this progression.