New PET brain scans to explore targets for mental health treatments
A Program for Innovative PET Radioligand Development and Application - A Translational Toolbox for Treatments for Mental Health
This project develops new PET imaging agents to help understand and improve treatments for people with mental health conditions like depression and schizophrenia.
Quick facts
| Grant type | U01 cooperative agreement |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Yale University NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (New Haven, United States) |
| Project ID | NIH-11109468 on NIH RePORTER |
What this research studies
From your perspective, researchers will make and test new PET tracers that bind specific brain chemicals thought to be involved in mental illness. They will start with lab and cell work, then test promising tracers in non-human primates, and finally perform early human imaging studies. Once a tracer is proven safe and effective, they will use it in people with mental health conditions to study how brain targets relate to symptoms and treatment response. The program is run at Yale and is designed to move tracers quickly from chemistry into real-world clinical imaging.
Who could benefit from this research
Good fit: Ideal candidates include adults with psychiatric conditions such as depression or schizophrenia and healthy volunteers for early safety and comparison scans.
Not a fit: People seeking an immediate new therapy or those whose symptoms are unrelated to the specific brain targets being imaged may not receive direct clinical benefit from participation.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, these PET tracers could let doctors see specific brain targets, speed up development of better drugs, and help match treatments to individual patients.
How similar studies have performed: PET radioligands have successfully mapped dopamine and serotonin systems and aided drug development, but creating new tracers for other mental-health targets remains challenging and partly novel.
Where this research is happening
New Haven, United States
- Yale University — New Haven, United States (Active)
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Carson, Richard E. — Yale University
- Study coordinator: Carson, Richard E.
About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.