Attend a free webinar on May 28th to hear from Dr. Dima A. Hammoud about a newly developed positron emission tomography (PET) fungal imaging radiotracer that has superior characteristics over the PET imaging radiotracer, 18F-fluorodeoxglucose (FDG), which is the current standard of care for diagnosing fungal infections.
Fungal infections remain a major health burden with very high mortality and morbidity in immunosuppressed cancer and transplant patients, and in some congenital immunodeficiencies. While FDG is the current standard for diagnosing fungal and bacterial infections, it cannot readily differentiate between a variety of fungal pathogens or distinguish fungi from other pathogens such as bacteria.
This new PET fungal imaging agent, developed by researchers at the NIH Clinical Center and National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), exploits fungal-specific metabolic pathways absent in mammalian cells and bacteria. More specifically, it’s used as food, a fluoride radio-labeled version of a sugar: 2-deoxy-2-[18F] fluorocellobiose ([18F]-FCB).18F-FCB can detect fungus shortly after infection, without the need for invasive procedures, can be used to monitor infection in vivo and assess the progress of antifungal treatments in real time.