Where does the drug go?
Track your drug throughout the body with quantitative, longitudinal imaging to characterize its biodistribution and pharmacokinetics, and accurately estimate target engagement in vivo.
Does your biologic drug reach the right tissue, in the right amount, at the right time?
Understanding biodistribution and target engagement is critical for selecting the right candidates before clinical development.
The method
Your biologic is labeled without altering its biological properties and tracked non-invasively using longitudinal, in vivo total-body PET imaging. Imaging begins at the time of injection and continues over a time course tailored to the molecule's expected pharmacokinetics, from minutes to hours or days. TheraPET4D® transforms the imaging data into quantitative measurements of whole-body biodistribution and pharmacokinetics, providing precise parameters of target delivery, target engagement and clearance kinetics.
The result is a comprehensive, quantitative profile of your drug's in vivo behavior, revealing where it distributes, how long it persists, and how effectively it reaches and engages its target — delivering the evidence needed to make faster, more confident preclinical decisions.
The answers
Where does your drug go?
Whole-body biodistribution: Quantitative 4D images showing drug distribution across all organs over time.
How does it behave over time?
Pharmacokinetics: Dynamic tissue uptake, clearance and blood kinetics throughout the study.
How much drug reaches each tissue?
Quantitative drug delivery: Measure the delivery of your drug from the circulation into individual tissues, enabling robust comparisons across tissues and therapeutic candidates.
Does your drug reach the target?
Precise target engagement: Quantitative assessment of specific drug binding at the intended target site.
Preclinical Models & Species
We offer access to a broad range of mouse and rat models, including healthy animals, orthotopic and subcutaneous tumor models, inflammation models, and selected transgenic models of neurodegenerative disease. The choice of animal strain and disease model is tailored to the specific objectives of each study.
Tracers
Your biologic is labeled with the optimal positron-emitting isotope for its expected pharmacokinetics, ensuring high-quality PET imaging throughout its circulation. Labeling chemistry is designed to preserve the molecule's biological integrity, target binding and pharmacokinetic profile.
Associated equipment
Does your antibody reach and engage its target in vivo?
A biotech company developing a therapeutic antibody needs to demonstrate that the antibody reaches the intended tissue, accumulates at the target site, and binds specifically to its molecular target before advancing to clinical development.
Study design
- 01
Labeling and validation
- Label the antibody while preserving its biological properties.
- Confirm the functionality and binding activity of the labeled antibody.
- 02
Longitudinal in vivo PET imaging and ex vivo analysis
- Intravenous administration of the labeled antibody in the selected animal model.
- Dynamic total-body PET/MRI imaging at 0, 5, 12, 24, 48, 72, 120 and 240 hours post-injection.
- Serial blood sampling at the same time points to determine systemic pharmacokinetics.
- Tissue and organ collection 10 days (240 h) post-injection.
- Radioactivity measurements to validate the imaging findings.
- 03
TheraPET4D® quantitative analysis
- Whole-body biodistribution of the antibody over time.
- Blood pharmacokinetics and systemic clearance.
- Organ- and tissue-specific uptake throughout the study.
- Target delivery and specific target engagement at the intended site.
- Correlation of in vivo PET and ex vivo biodistribution measurements.
Outcome
The study provides a comprehensive quantitative assessment of the antibody's in vivo behavior, revealing where it distributes, how long it remains in circulation, how efficiently it reaches the target tissue, and the extent of specific target engagement. These data support evidence-based candidate selection, dose optimization, and go/no-go decisions early in preclinical development.
Results are typically delivered within 2 months, depending on study design and scope.
Ready to start your molecular PET imaging study?
Schedule a technical consultation with the MIBIOTRACE team.