Karolinska Institutet

Partner Presentation

The PET-center at Karolinska Institutet was founded in the late 1970?s and today, it has 43 researchers and assistants covering the multidisciplinary expertise required for methodological advancement and clinical application of PET-imaging. The center has pioneered quantitative neuroreceptor imaging and over the last 25 years developed more than 1/3 of the world armamentarium of radioligands for molecular neuroimaging. Operations and radioligand development are directed by Prof. Christer Halldin, a leading radiochemist in Europe. The Center is equipped with a cyclotron (GE Advance), a new radiochemistry lab and a high performance PET system (Siemens, HRRT) tailored for neuroimaging as well as a new Mediso micro-PET system for animal studies installed January 2011. It cooperates with the Karolinska Institutet Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders, KIND (Profs Bölte & Forssberg) and has a long standing collaboration with the Swedish Twin Registry (Prof Lichtenstein, Dr Borg) that includes 170000 twins. The PET-center and its partners will bring to this consortium expertise in clinical PET imaging, early evaluation of CNS drugs, radioligand development, functional imaging, anatomical imaging, twin studies and psychiatric genetic epidemiology (WP3 and WP4), as well as micro-PET in animal models of neurodevelopment contributing to WP2-3 (Dr. Gulyas). The PET-center has collaborated with more than 15 drug companies over the years, of which AstraZeneca currently is the main one. The Center is integrated with the Stockholm County health system thereby having access to clinical samples of drug-naïve and treated patients with ASD.