Alzheimer's: Today Alzheimer's disease is diagnosed using clinical criteria, which are often inaccurate and are useful only late in the disease progression. While definitive diagnosis requires identification of amyloid plaques in the brain at autopsy, there is increasing evidence that amyloid plaques are present for many years prior to the onset of dementia. This state may correspond to Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a condition that often evolves to AD. Early and accurate detection of amyloid plaques by brain imaging provides an opportunity to dramatically improve diagnosis and, for the first time, could allow monitoring of disease progression. This could offer significant benefits, with four drugs approved to treat AD and more than 30 disease-modifying drugs in development. With 5 million Americans currently suffering from AD, 500,000 new cases occurring each year, and more then 10 million MCI patients, an accurate and rapid imaging test for AD would represent an enormous benefit to neurologists and patients who are looking for definitive answers regarding suspected memory impairment.

Parkinson's: Approximately 1% of the U.S. population over 65 has PD (1.5 million people). Like AD, PD is diagnosed by clinical criteria, which are inaccurate, particularly early in the disease when many different movement disorders cause similar symptoms. For example, essential tremor (which affects 5 - 10 million Americans) is commonly confused with early PD. However, therapy and prognosis of these two diseases are dramatically different. Definitive diagnosis of PD currently requires verification of degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the brain at autopsy. Avid's agents allow in vivo imaging of dopaminergic degeneration and may facilitate early diagnosis and monitoring of PD patients, as well as differentiating PD from essential tremor.

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is one of the most common types of progressive dementia, with an estimated 2 million people effected in the U.S. alone. The central feature of DLB is progressive cognitive decline, combined with variations in alertness and attention, recurrent visual hallucinations, and Parkinsonian-like motor symptoms, such as rigidity and the loss of spontaneous movement. DLB subjects may also suffer from depression. The symptoms of DLB are caused by the build-up of Lewy bodies from the alpha-synuclein protein, which accumulates inside the nuclei of neurons in areas of the brain that control memory and motor control. Avid's imaging compounds may allow the detection of the earliest stages of dopaminergic neuronal degeneration, which is associated with DLB.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) affects 21 million children and adults in the United States and is rapidly increasing globally. The end result of progressive DM, with its associated loss of glucose control and elevation of serum triglycerides, is often serious life-threatening diseases, such as heart or kidney failure or stroke. The loss of glucose control in diabetes is due to the loss of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. Avid's compounds are being evaluated for the potential of imaging beta cell mass in the pancreas. This may allow the non-invasive detection of diabetes or pre-diabetic conditions.

Molecular Imaging and Radiopharmaceuticals: Diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals are radiotracer drugs (often referred to as molecular imaging agents) and are used in patients for diagnosis and monitoring of disease processes at the molecular level. Molecular imaging radiopharmaceuticals are typically very safe (extremely low doses of the drug are used). Radiopharmaceuticals are utilized for imaging with both SPECT (lower cost modality with large installed base) and PET (a newer high resolution imaging method available at only a few centers). In 2006, over 20 million SPECT scans and 1.5 million PET scans will be performed. Avid's strong intellectual property in brain imaging could create important new molecular imaging markets.