Cyclotron Funds Sought for UCI Brain Research
Hoping to expand its research into the cause of schizophrenia and the biochemistry of the brain, the UC Irvine College of Medicine has begun a $1.5-million fund-raising campaign to build a cyclotron on campus.
Having a cyclotron, which is used in manufacturing radioactive isotopes that can track chemicals in the brain, would be the last step in completing the medical school’s pioneering “brain imaging” research center, one of 16 such centers in the nation, UCI officials said.
The 3-year-old center already owns a $1-million, positron emission tomographic scanner (PETSCAN) that can map brain metabolism. The center also has a $500,000 annual budget, a staff of seven researchers, 4,000 square feet of office space and a concrete vault designed to hold a cyclotron.
Isotopes Flown In
“That leaves just the cyclotron. It’s the last $1.5 million that we need,” said psychiatry professor Monte S. Buchsbaum, who directs the medical school’s brain imaging research.
Without a cyclotron of their own, Buchsbaum and his researchers have had to buy their radioactive isotopes from a nuclear laboratory at UC Davis, 450 miles away.
Every Wednesday the short-lived isotopes, with a half-life of just less than two hours, are flown into John Wayne Airport by chartered plane, then rushed to the medical school so Buchsbaum and his team can inject the isotope into research subjects and conduct their brain scans.
During a scan, minute amounts of the isotope, called fluorine-18, are taken up by the brain in a glucose solution. As the research subject reads or solves a psychological puzzle, the brain burns glucose, the isotope is released and the positron emission scanner picks up the extraordinary image of the brain at work, said Wade Rose, associate dean of community affairs and development for the College of Medicine.
Rather than simply showing the anatomy of the brain, each one of these $2,600 scans depicts brain function and is part of basic research that Buchsbaum hopes will one day reveal the cause of such mental illnesses as Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia and depression.
300 Scans in 3 Years
In the last three years, the medical center has conducted 300 such scans, UCI officials said. But because the isotopes must be imported from Davis, the medical center’s million-dollar PETSCAN “only operates 10% of the time; 90% of the time it’s just sitting there (unused),” Rose said.
And whenever the chartered plane is delayed by fog or mechanical troubles, the isotopes decay and research is delayed. After two hours, the isotopes lose half their potency and become useless--and “you just cancel the scans, it’s grossly inefficient,” Rose said.
Buchsbaum added: “The isotope lost during the airplane flight costs thousands of dollars. If we had our local cyclotron, we could make all the isotopes we need. We could do (brain scans) on many more subjects.”
If UCI had its own cyclotron, Rose estimated that the UCI center could do up to eight brain scans a day, compared with about three a week now. Also, Buchsbaum said, his team could expand its work to include detailed studies of how drugs affect schizophrenics and more diagnostic studies of mentally ill patients.
Newsletter Planned
But Buchsbaum and his team are now getting financial help from a month-old “Brain-Imaging Center Committee” formed by Corona del Mar philanthropist Athalie Irvine Clarke. The committee will hold its first fund-raising event Thursday--a buffet dinner for 70 people at the home of ophthalmologist Richard Kratz in Newport Beach.
Clarke could not be reached for comment late Tuesday, but Jean Liechty, founding president of the new committee, said that the support group would like UCI’s center to become “one of the leading centers in the world” for research on mental illness and the biochemistry of the brain.
The committee plans to publish a newsletter, hold lectures on brain imaging research and offer memberships at $25 to $100 per person.
In addition, Rose said, the new committee may provide $500,000 to establish an endowed chair in psychiatry, with an emphasis on brain-scan research.
The committee may also provide financial support so a UCI researcher can build a new generation of the PETSCAN, Rose said. A new design for the scanners is expected to cut the length of a typical brain scan from 60 minutes to just 10 minutes, thus enabling the brain function of children to be studied for the first time; children will not sit still long enough for an hour’s study.
The committee has raised some money already, Liechty said, although she declined to say how much. In addition, one UCI medical school official said, the committee has applied to the Irvine Community Foundation for a $500,000 grant and expects to seek money from other foundations to support the brain imaging center.
