Speaker
Description
Invasive fungal infections such as aspergillosis are life-threatening diseases mainly affecting a growing number of immuno-compromised patients. Early diagnosis is crucial, but conventional imaging modalities such as CT or MRI lack specificity and sensitivity. Molecular imaging, especially using Positron Emission Tomography (PET) holds the potential to specifically target fungal infections thereby overcoming limitations of current diagnostic approaches. Whereas currently only indirect effects of infections can be detected e.g. by the increased glucose metabolism using 18F-FDG, only targeting the fungus itself would achieve the required specificity. Over the past decade a multitude of such directly targeting radiotracers have been developed and tested for their ability to serve as fungal specific imaging agents. These include antibody constructs and peptides targeting the fungal cell wall, radiolabelled sugars, antifungal drugs or siderophores targeting the specific iron metabolism of fungi. In this talk an overview of these developments will be given, their status towards clinical translation reviewed and potential pro and cons being discussed. Overall, these developments hold a great potential to change the diagnostic approach to allow early and specific detection of invasive fungal diseases.