Kinetic analysis of the metabotropic glutamate subtype 5 tracer [(18)F]FPEB in bolus and bolus-plus-constant-infusion studies in humans.

[(18)F]FPEB is a positron emission tomography tracer which, in preclinical studies, has shown high specificity and selectivity toward the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5). It possesses the potential to be used in human studies to evaluate mGluR5 function in a range of neuropsychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and Fragile X syndrome. To define optimal scan methodology, healthy human subjects were scanned for 6 hours following either a bolus injection (n=5) or bolus-plus-constant-infusion (n=5) of [(18)F]FPEB. Arterial blood samples were collected and parent fraction measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to determine the metabolite-corrected plasma input function. Time activity curves were extracted from 13 regions and fitted by various models to estimate V(T) and BPND. [(18)F]FPEB was well fitted by the two-tissue compartment model, MA1 (t*=30), and MRTM (using cerebellum white matter as a reference). Highest V(T) values were observed in the anterior cingulate and caudate, and lowest V(T) values were observed in the cerebellum and pallidum. For kinetic modeling studies, VT and BPND were estimated from bolus or bolus-plus-constant-infusion scans as short as 90 minutes. Bolus-plus-constant-infusion of [(18)F]FPEB reduced intersubject variability in V(T) and allowed equilibrium analysis to be completed with a 30-minute scan, acquired 90-120 minutes after the start of injection.