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Progress in PET Imaging of the Norepinephrine Transporter System

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PET and SPECT of Neurobiological Systems

Abstract

The norepinephrine transporter (NET) has long been recognized to play a role in various neurological and psychiatric disorders, e.g., ADHD, substance abuse, depression, alcoholism, obesity, addiction, and Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. However, many of the important findings resulting from studies in vitro using postmortem tissues have never been verified via in vivo methods due to the lack of suitable radioligands, preventing the brain imaging of NET in living systems. We have identified the superiority of (S,S)-[11C]MRB and the suitability of the MRB analogs as potential NET ligands for PET translational studies from preclinical investigation in animals to clinical research in humans. In this review article, progress in these translational research studies will be discussed, including the role of NET in ADHD, substance abuse, depression, post -traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), alcohol dependence, obesity, aging, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering RO1 EB002630-29 (Fowler/Ding); National Institute on Drug Abuse, DA-06278, 9 R01 DA019062-31, 5R56DA019062-33 (Ding); NIH/NCRR U54 Interdisciplinary Research Consortium on Stress Self-Control and Addiction (Sinha/Neumeister); 1RL 1AA 017540-01; VA Merit Award; and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (1R21DK090764-01A1, Ding/Sherwin), GlaxoSmithKline, and Pfizer. The author is grateful to the PET group at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the PET Center team at Yale University School of Medicine for their contributions and assistance. The author is also grateful to Drs. Sabri and Hesse and their team at the Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Leipzig, for their collaborations.

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  1. Departments of Radiology, Psychiatry and Chemistry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

    Yu-Shin Ding

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  1. Yu-Shin Ding
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Correspondence to Yu-Shin Ding .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Rudi A.J.O. Dierckx

  2. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Medical Engineering and Computer Science, Offenburg University, Offenburg, Germany

    Andreas Otte

  3. Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Erik F.J. de Vries

  4. Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Aren van Waarde

  5. Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Amsterdam University Medical Centers location VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Adriaan A. Lammertsma

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Ding, YS. (2021). Progress in PET Imaging of the Norepinephrine Transporter System. In: Dierckx, R.A., Otte, A., de Vries, E.F., van Waarde, A., Lammertsma, A.A. (eds) PET and SPECT of Neurobiological Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53176-8_20

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