Kevin M. Bennett1,
Shannon S. Olfers2, Vinodh Narayanan2
1School of
Biological & Health Systems Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe,
Az, USA; 2Developmental Neurogenetics Laboratory, Barrow
Neurological Institute, Phoenix, Az, USA
Neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) is a cogenital neurodegenerative disease. The goal of this work is to determine whether fast axonal transport rates in the CNS of mice heterozygous for the neurofibromin 1 (NF1) gene differ from those of WT controls. We used MEMRI to demonstrate that uptake of Mn2+ in the olfactory bulb in NF1 heterozygous mice is significantly lower than in wild-type, implicating RAS deregulation as a potential mechanism for deficits in NF. Animals treated with lovastatin have restored axonal transport, demonstrating that MEMRI may be useful to screen compounds to treat patients with NF1.
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