New PET tracer may identify diverse invasive mold infections behind life-threatening illnesses in cancer and transplant patients: Study
Cancer Care
A novel PET radiotracer can accurately detect a wide range of mold species that are linked to dangerous infections, according to new research presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2025 Annual Meeting. The imaging agent has the potential to dramatically enhance the diagnosis and monitoring of invasive mold infections in patients.
Advances in cancer and immunosuppressive treatments have helped many patients live longer, but they also leave more people with weakened immune systems, making invasive mold infections increasingly common. With mortality rates of invasive mold infections reaching up to 85 percent, early and accurate diagnosis followed by timely treatment is critical to improving patient outcomes.
“Currently it’s very difficult to detect invasive mold infections,” said Carlos Ruiz-Gonzalez, MD, a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University Medical School in Baltimore, Maryland. “Definitive diagnosis often depends on invasive procedures or on biomarkers that lack sensitivity for many mold species. In this study, we aimed to develop a PET tracer capable of detecting a broad range of mold infections and distinguishing them from inflammation with high sensitivity and specificity.”
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