MICA: [18F]LW223: a superior TSPO PET radiotracer for a clinical breakthrough to detect regional tissue inflammation

Doctors will soon be able to see inflammation inside a patient’s body in real time, using a new radioactive tracer called LW223 that lights up on a PET scan. Inflammation drives many serious conditions—heart attacks, arthritis, and neurological diseases—but current imaging tools struggle to distinguish active inflammation from other tissue damage. The existing tracer for a protein called TSPO, which marks inflamed cells, is unreliable because it binds differently depending on a patient’s genetic makeup. LW223 was designed to bind consistently to TSPO regardless of genetics, giving doctors a clean, reproducible signal. The team will first inject LW223 into healthy volunteers and track its movement through the body over time. They will then repeat the process in patients who have recently had a heart attack, to confirm that the tracer’s signal truly corresponds to inflamed tissue around the damaged heart muscle. If successful, LW223 could become a standard clinical tool. Cardiologists would see exactly where and how much inflammation remains after a heart attack, guiding decisions on anti-inflammatory treatments. The same tracer could eventually be used to monitor rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or even brain inflammation—conditions where invisible tissue activity currently forces doctors to rely on symptoms or invasive biopsies.