Polarean, a commercial-stage medical imaging company advancing functional MRI of the lungs, announced the expansion of its Xenon MRI platform into cardiopulmonary pharma-sponsored drug development through a multi-centre U.S. study in PH-ILD.
Funded by a leading cardiopulmonary pharmaceutical company, the researcher-led study will use Xenon MRI–derived biomarkers to evaluate an inhaled therapy designed to address both pulmonary vascular dysfunction and interstitial lung disease. Polarean is working in collaboration with VIDA Diagnostics (VIDA), providing centralised imaging operations, site orchestration, and advanced Xenon MRI biomarker analysis.
Expanding Xenon MRI as a Cardiopulmonary Drug Development Tool
Xenon MRI is the only imaging modality that specifically probes the smallest part of the heart–lung vascular circuit, the pulmonary capillaries. Until now, this represented a “silent zone” of lung function that could not be measured directly with existing tools such as right-heart catheterisation or V/Q (ventilation–perfusion) scans, which rely on indirect inference of capillary pressures, flow, blood volume, and oxygen transfer efficiency.
Xenon is gas that follows the same path as oxygen gas and can enter micron-level spaces to assess treatment-induced physiological changes across the lung parenchyma and capillary bed, where oxygen is delivered to the blood. Xenon MRI enables noninvasive, radiation-free quantitative images that have the potential to support:
Early pharmacodynamic readouts in clinical studies
Differentiation between inhaled and systemic therapies based on the mechanism of action
Improved patient characterisation as predominantly left-heart disease (post-capillary) or right-heart disease (pre-capillary)
Greater endpoint sensitivity in cardiopulmonary clinical trials
Innovative Trial Design for an Inhaled Therapy
The study is designed to capture both acute (within minutes) and chronic (over 12 weeks) treatment effects using Xenon MRI to quantify regional changes in lung ventilation, gas diffusion across the interstitial membrane, pulmonary capillary blood volume, and microvascular hemodynamics.
By pairing an inhaled therapy with an inhaled imaging signaling agent, these measurements provide direct insight into cardiopulmonary physiology at the site where the drug is delivered. Imaging the smallest and most critical functional units of oxygen transfer to the blood, the alveoli and surrounding pulmonary capillaries, enables direct assessment of a region that has historically remained a “silent zone” and is not visible with conventional imaging, pulmonary function testing, or hemodynamic measurements alone.
“There are encouraging recent data on prostacyclin analogues in fibrotic lung disease, both in patients with and without pulmonary hypertension. It will be interesting to see whether Xenon MRI gas-exchange imaging can help elucidate if early antifibrotic changes in interstitial membrane function can be visualized and quantified noninvasively," said Arun Jose, MD, MS, an investigator in the study from the University of Cincinnati.
“This study builds on our prior work using Xenon MRI to evaluate early treatment effects in pulmonary hypertension. Assessing regional lung pharmacodynamics within minutes of inhalation may help clarify how inhaled therapies exert local pulmonary effects distinct from systemic mechanisms,” said Sudar Rajagopal, MD, PhD, a cardiologist investigator in the trial from Duke University.
