In vivo quantification of dopaminergic terminals loss in Parkinson’s Disease rat model: comparison between [18F]FMT and [18F]FDOPA.

Objectives: Rat models of Parkinson’s disease (PD), such as unilaterally lesioned rats with 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), are useful to evaluate novel antiparkinsonian therapies. MicroPET imaging, using L-3,4-dihydroxy-6-[18F]-fluoro-phenylalanine ([18F]FDOPA) allows longitudinal evaluations of DA terminals loss. However, chemical structure of [18F]FDOPA leads to suboptimal PET imaging. 18F-fluoro-m-tyrosine ([18F]FMT) is an effective PET tracer to evaluate DA terminals integrity and L-aromatic amino acid decarboxylase (AAAD) metabolic pathway. So far, there are no available quantitative PET studies comparing the two methods in hemiparkinsonian rats. In this study, we compare imaging data provided by [18F]FMT PET and [18F]FDOPA PET in 6-OHDA-lesioned rats.

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 PET with both [18F]FMT and [18F]FDOPA. 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. Six days after the last PET scan, rats were sacrificed, and striatum were rapidly removed for striatal DA and metabolites quantification.

Results: Striatal accumulation was observed for both tracers. However, while the administration of [18F]FDOPA required two peripheral inhibitors (benserazide and entacapone), only benserazide is needed with [18F]FMT. As consequence of the 6-OHDA-lesion, significant decrease of both [18F]FMT and [18F]DOPA 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 for [18F]FMT and p<0.05 for [18F]DOPA) and to the ipsilateral striatum of sham-treated rats (p<0.001 for both tracers). The DA content in the ipsilateral striatum was significantly lower (p<0.001) than in the contralateral striatum in the 6-OHDA-injected group, whereas such difference was not measured with the sham group. This indicate that [18F]FMT PET is as effective as [18F]DOPA PET to quantify loss of DA presynaptic function in unilaterally 6-OHDA lesioned rats.

Conclusions: Our results are in agreement with data reporting correlation between these two tracers in a Non-human primate model of PD. The sensitivity of the data quantification obtained in this study, confirms the interest to pursue longitudinal investigations with [18F]FMT to monitor dopaminergic dysfunction in a more progressive preclinical model of PD.