Novel PET imaging tool identifies early signs of inflammatory bowel disease and predicts response to treatment

Visual Abstract. Active bowel inflammation disrupts the bowel cell lining, which causes the inflammatory T cells to secrete Granzyme B into the extracellular space, progressively accentuating the inflammatory response through a feed-forward mechanism. In the normal or non-inflamed bowel, there is no extracellular Granzyme B and therefore, 68Ga-NOTA-GZP PET does not show any uptake in the bowel (upper panel), while with active inflammation, the secreted active form of Granzyme B is detected and quantifiable by 68Ga-NOTA-GZP PET imaging (lower panel). Credit: Dr. P. Heidari and A. Hajmirazaian, et al, MGH, Boston, MA, A newly developed imaging method, granzyme B PET, Read More