Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Drug Discovery: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

The better and earlier a disease can be diagnosed and characterized, the higher the chance to be able to interfere in this process with a chemical entity. This is the rationale for the use of imaging techniques in the drug discovery and development process. One of the principal imaging modalities is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Its multiparametric nature enables anatomical, functional, metabolic, and to a certain extent, also target-related information to be obtained non-invasively at high spatial resolution. This favors the characterization of a disease state and the corresponding drug intervention. The non-invasiveness of MRI strengthens the link between pre-clinical and clinical pharmaceutical research