Sugar-Based Tracing Agent for PET
February 11, 2014 | Terry Sharrer
Since 1976, when medical scientists at the University of Pennsylvania first used fluorodeoxyglucose (deoxyglucose with a fluorine 18 isotope label), it has been possible to image atherosclerotic plaque in arteries by PET scans. Recently, though, researchers at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York, have found that a different sugar, fluorodeoxymannose, offers a better tracer because a critical subset of macrophages, responsible for plaque-causing inflammation, have mannose receptors which then provide better imaging. Perhaps it’s only coincidental that “manna,” the word from which mannose derives, was the food from heaven that sustained the Israelites as they crossed the Sinai. MORE
Image Credit: SantaCruzBiotech