Associate Professor, Radiology University of Pittsburgh Phone: (412) 647-0714 Fax: (412) 647-0700 Email: pricjc@upmc.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University

Research Interests

Our research involves pharmacokinetic modeling of positron emission tomography (PET) data acquired in studies of ligand-binding interactions, blood flow, and glucose metabolism in brain. This multidisciplinary collaborative research includes studies of healthy brain, neurodegeneration, aging, sleep, depression, eating disorders, and diabetes.

A recent focus has been the development of technology for the non-invasive assessment of amyloid plaques in human brain based upon the development of a PET amyloid imaging agent, by Drs. Klunk and Mathis, named Pittsburgh Compound-B (or PiB).  Amyloid deposition may be central to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathogenesis and begin over a decade before the earliest clinical symptoms. Our group performed the initial fully quantitative evaluation of the PiB PET methodology and verified that simplified methods were valid for routine use in control, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and AD subjects.

Current methods work is focused on establishing criteria to identify amyloid-positive (PiB+) from amyloid-negative (PiB-) individuals. The accurate distinction of PiB+ individuals is important as this group may benefit most from anti-amyloid therapy.  Another effort is aimed at relating voxel-level measures of PIB retention, FDG metabolism and structural MR volumes in control, MCI, and AD subjects, on a longitudinal basis.  We are also working on integrative analysis methods that can provide more comprehensive assessments of an individual's functional status based upon measures obtained from multiple modalities (e.g. PET neuroreceptor or amyloid binding measures and task-related or resting state fMRI measures).

Recent Publications

• Price JC, Lopresti BJ, Mason NS, Holt DP, Meltzer CC, Smith GS, Gunn RN, Huang Y, Mathis CA: Analyses of [18F]altanserin bolus injection PET data II: Consideration of radiolabeled metabolites in humans. Synapse 41: 11-21, 2001.
• Price JC, Drevets WC, Ruszkiewicz J, Greer PJ, Villemagne VL, Xu, L, Cantwell MN, Mathis CA:  Sequential [15O]water PET studies in baboons: Before and after Amphetamine. J Nucl Med 43(8): 1090-1100, 2002.
• Price JC, Klunk WE, Lopresti BJ, Lu X, Hoge JA, Ziolko SK, Holt DP, Meltzer CC, DeKosky ST,  Mathis CA: Kinetic Modeling of Amyloid Binding in Humans using PET Imaging and Pittsburgh Compound-B. J Cereb Blood Flow Metab 25: 1528-1547, 2005.
• Ziolko SK, Weissfeld LA, Klunk WE, Mathis CA, Hoge JA, Lopresti BJ, DeKosky ST, Price JC:  Evaluation of Voxel-based Methods for the Statistical Analysis of PIB PET Amyloid Imaging Studies in Alzheimer's Disease.  Neuroimage 33: 94-102, 2006.
• Xu L, Mazumdar S, Price JC: Covariate Adjustment in Partial Least Squares for the Extraction of the Spatial-Temporal Pattern from Positron Emission Tomography Data. Stat Methodol 4: 44-63, 2007.