New Prostate Cancer Imaging Tracer Improves Dectection

Thanks Ira for the news.

This is another step forward in procuring the best radiopharmaceutical for image exams. This class of tracers is dethroning for good the traditional CT, MRI and BS, used presently to diagnose the extent of the disease. In fact they may even get better replacing some biopsies in the future.

I have followed some of these studies on substances in nuclear medicine and read an interesting finding regarding the PSMA (a resident enzyme in a cell’s membrane) that is found not just in prostatic cells but also in other cancerous tumors not related to prostate cancer; for instance, in breast cancer and brain cancer. Surely this will complicate any judgment when identifying and singling out PCa in an image study but still for the moment the PSMA based tracers makes the best choice in diagnosing the bandit.
I also believe that the radioisotope F18 (18F) works well in PET machines and may be preferable to other like the 68 Ga, for the long half-life, permitting images captioned hours later increasing the specificity of the exam (highly reliable results).

The PSMA is involved in several phases of cell’s life making it a useful target in diagnosis and treatments. It participates in angiogenesis, cell signaling, tumor survival, and invasion into neighboring environment/tissues, which expressions can be used by researchers when drawing newer trials.

I hope medical institutions such as urological associations adopt and give preferences to these types of tests instead of the traditional ones that is known to provide many false negatives.

Best,

VG