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Kevin McCully, a professor of exercise science in the College of Education’s department of kinesiology, is leading the biomarker study.  UGA Photo by Andrew Tucker

A new optical method using light to measure muscle energy production in people trying to recover from debilitating injuries and diseases has been developed by University of Georgia kinesiology researchers, and it could save patients 100 times the cost of getting the same measurements through magnetic resonance imaging.

Kevin McCully, professor of exercise science in the College of Education’s department of kinesiology, said he and his team of researchers have a patent pending and recently published a paper on the method. They hope use of the method will expand the ability to test diseased and injured populations.

The work is part of a collaboration between UGA, Georgia Health Sciences University, and Biogen Idec, a Cambridge, Mass., pharmaceutical company looking to develop new drugs to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

McCully recently received a $263,000 contract from Biogen Idec to conduct a biomarker study of skeletal muscle energy metabolism on healthy volunteers and patients with ALS. He is exploring the feasibility of using magnetic resonance spectroscopy and the new optical near-infrared spectroscopy as biomarkers of skeletal muscle energy metabolism in clinical trials in healthy volunteers and patients with neuromuscular disorders, such as ALS.

A biomarker, or biological marker, is a measurement or test substance used as an indicator of a biological state. It is a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention. It is used in many scientific fields.

“One of the main purposes of the Exercise Vascular Biology Laboratory is to develop noninvasive ‘biomarkers,’ so this is an exciting partnership for us,” said McCully. “When I came to UGA we didn’t have the resources available for me, as we didn’t have a magnet. With the establishment of the Bioimaging Research Center (BIRC) in the Coverdell building and the ability to perform multinuclear spectroscopy, my lab was able to establish our muscle mitochondrial measurements. What we really worked on was the ability to test people with injuries and diseases, such as spinal cord injury and now ALS.”

The results of this study evaluating the new optical method as well as the more traditional multinuclear spectroscopy approach will lead to the improvement of the quality of drug trials to treat patients with muscle and nerve diseases, according to McCully.

“One example is a drug that was created to treat patients by improving energy metabolism, and they only found out later that the drug actually didn’t improve energy metabolism,” he said. “Our testing will make sure that drugs that are supposed to improve energy production in nerves and muscles, actually do that.”

McCully said UGA researchers are hoping to expand this study, and anticipate that there will be more studies in the future. The project represents the start of collaboration between UGA researchers and drug companies around ‘biomarkers’ for testing drugs.  There are other related projects that researchers hope to start in the biomarker area.

“There are some potentially important treatments for nerve-related diseases that involve reduced energy production,” said McCully. “It’s hard to detect improvements in nerve energy production, but much easier to detect muscle energy production. So we can use muscle measurements to tell us whether the nerves would also benefit.”

Article: “Noninvasive evaluation of skeletal muscle mitochondrial capacity with near-infrared spectroscopy: correcting for blood volume changes” (Terence E. Ryan, Melissa L. Erickson, Jared T. Brizendine, Hui-Ju Young and Kevin K.McCully) Published in Journal of Applied Physiology, 113: 175-183, May 10, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/ugabiomarker