This five-year, $679,899 Project Grant award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) under the Extramural Research Programs in the Neurosciences and Neurological Disorders (CFDA 93.853) will fund research at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern) to evaluate the use of positron emission tomography (PET)-derived measurements of synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A (SV2A) as a potential biomarker for essential tremor (ET).
The key objectives of the research project are to: 1) Measure synaptic density using SV2A PET imaging in 30 ET patients and 30 matched controls to assess lower SV2A binding in the cerebellar cortex of ET patients; 2) Evaluate cerebellar cortex SV2A PET binding as a diagnostic marker by comparing ET patients to 15 Parkinson's disease and 15 dystonia patients; and 3) Perform post-mortem SV2A autoradiography analysis on cerebellar tissue samples from 20 ET patients and 20 controls to validate the in vivo PET imaging findings. The goal is to determine if in vivo measurement of synaptic density can provide important information for understanding and diagnosing ET, which currently lacks established biomarkers.
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