GE Healthcare of Chalfont St. Giles, U.K., has signed a nonexclusive global agreement with Merck to share technology to image the lungs and possibly advance the development of respiratory treatment.
The Whitehouse Station, NJ, pharmaceutical company will have access to spin signal technology (SST) utilizing hyperpolarized xenon-129 gas, a molecular imaging agent currently under investigation by GE to provide high-speed, quantitative MR imaging of the lung. GE originally licensed this technology from Princeton University.
The technology is being evaluated to determine if it can provide more sensitive information than current tests about how diseased lungs function. Xenon can be modified with SST to make the gas detectable with MRI, which in turn would acquire images that may allow regional imaging of disease.
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