As a cardiologist, I have long noticed that patients with heart failure have a wide range of problems which occur outside the heart. We need to understand the wider effects of heart disease across the whole human body in order to deliver a ‘whole person’ multi-organ holistic approach. Our project with total body molecular imaging can detail human physiology to an unprecedented level and may unlock several new insights into human disease and in turn generate new avenues for novel treatments for heart patients. I can’t wait to get started on this exciting yet ambitious project!
Lead researcher Dr Sohaib Nazir, Clinical Senior Lecturer and Consultant Cardiologist, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences
21 November 2024
Funding awarded for first cardiac study on Total Body PET scanner
A £209k project grant from the Rosetrees Trust has been awarded to King’s College London’s Dr Sohaib Nazir for the first cardiac study on the Total Body PET scanner.
This award follows on from news of a £12m Medical Research Council infrastructure grant for one of the UK’s two MRC-funded Total Body PET scanners.
The aim of the project is to understand the impact of heart failure on other organs of the human body such as the lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys and muscle. Total body PET allows next-generation imaging with disruptive technology to acquire images with unparallelled multi-organ coverage to track biological processes at a scale and depth that has never been possible before in humans.
The study will compare a cohort of patients with heart failure to a cohort without heart failure to understand the impact of this disease on each organ of the body. The simultaneous assessment of all organs will allow researchers to understand the inter-organ interactions which occur following paired scans – one at rest, one after pharmacologically inducing cardiac stress - with a detailed analysis of blood flow and metabolism.
Dr Nazir will be working with researchers across the School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences and clinicians at Royal Brompton Hospital and St Thomas’ Hospital to deliver this project and is expected to start recruitment in 2025.
"Very large field-of-view “Total Body” PET is a revolution in molecular imaging, and we are very pleased to be at the forefront with two such scanners being installed, the first funded via the MRC within the National PET Imaging Platform," says Professor Alexander Hammers, Head of the PET Centre and Professor of Imaging and Neuroscience at King's College London.
"Dr Nazir’s project cleverly leverages the new technological possibilities to probe a clinically very relevant question – why do patients with seemingly the same disease have different clinical presentations? The experimental approach should allow stratification of patients and ultimately lead to personalised therapies. We very much look forward to this first externally funded Total Body PET study," he says.
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Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist
Head of the PET Centre and Professor of Imaging and Neuroscience