ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 20, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- MIR Preclinical Services (MIR) is pleased to announce that it will be highlighting its high resolution small animal PET, preclinical MRI, in vivo micro-CT, and in vivo bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging technologies at two major conference exhibits in November. The first exhibit will be at the annual meeting of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS), November 7-9 in Nashville, TN. The second exhibit will be at the 17th annual EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on "Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics", November 15-17 in Philadelphia, PA. These technologies are described below:
1. Small animal, high resolution PET integrated with micro-CT:
MIR owns and operates a Gamma Medica X-PET system, one of the
first of its kind, built on Gamma Medica's FLEX platform. This
technology combines high resolution preclinical PET with
micro-CT. This system has the largest axial field of view and
one of the highest sensitivities amongst small animal PET
systems, increasing throughput and minimizing costs. This
preclinical PET technology is directly translatable to human
clinical trials and allows accurate in vivo measurement of
tumor burden, quantify biodistribution of tracer molecules
and mechanisms of drug function in orthotopic, metastatic,
and transgenic models of cancer, as well as in conventional
human tumor xenograft models.
2. High resolution preclinical MRI:
MIR owns and operates a 7 Tesla Varian preclinical MRI system.
The company has extensive experience in a variety of in vivo
MRI techniques and has optimized throughput for faster
turnaround times at lower costs. This technology can be used
to accurately perform anatomical imaging, dynamic contrast
enhanced imaging, diffusion MRI, arterial spin labeling, the
quantification of edema and small molecule detection/
spectroscopic imaging.
3. In vivo Micro-CT:
MIR owns and operates two small animal micro-CT scanners on-site
(GE RS-150 and GMI Flex), with a contiguous animal preparation
suite. MIR's RS-150 micro-CT system is capable of in vivo
isotropic image resolutions as high as 52 microns. Soft tissue
imaging, with or without contrast agents, can be used to
distinguish normal tissue from tumor tissue and metastases.
Micro-CT is also ideally suited for skeletal phenotyping and
structural measurements such as bone mineral density and
trabecular bone volume fraction.
4. In vivo Optical Imaging:
MIR has licensed Xenogen's methods to perform in vivo
bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging for its clients. MIR
owns and operates a Xenogen IVIS(R) Imaging System, which allows
high-throughput in vitro and in vivo analyses. MIR has
developed a number of proprietary preclinical assays to
non-invasively assess drug function. Bioluminescence and
fluorescence imaging can be used to measure changes in gene
expression, tumor incidence and onset of tumor growth, cellular
proliferation, drug induced physiologic changes, induction of
apoptosis, P53 activation and more.
About MIR Preclinical Services
MIR is a contract research organization specializing in the application of state of the art, multimodality imaging technologies to the preclinical evaluation of novel drug candidates. The company boasts management with over 60 years of major pharma cancer drug discovery experience, and is a leader in the integration of traditional anti-cancer efficacy testing with clinically relevant imaging technologies to provide new insights to drug discovery and development. MIR offers a wide array of tumor models including human tumor xenograft, syngeneic, and transgenic models. The company is unique in its ability to apply non-invasive in vivo imaging modalities including preclinical MRI, X-ray micro-CT, high resolution preclinical PET, and bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging to visualize biological processes such as signal transduction, apoptosis and angiogenesis, and tumor growth. MIR actively collaborates with leading scientists in academia in developing new drug evaluation technologies with a view to publication of results in peer reviewed journals.