Targeting hard-to-kill fungal ...( Reston VA Killing the disease without...)

Reston, VA Killing the disease without killing the patient is an old dilemma for doctors fighting cancer and some of the tougher microorganisms such as fungal infections in individuals with suppressed immune systems. Drugs have little effect when a patient's own immune system isn't available to help, and these fungi can resist external radiation that would kill even a perfectly healthy human. But they can be easily killed by a very small dose of radiation inside their cells.

Monoclonal antibodies can be designed to deliver radiation to specific cell types while sparing surrounding tissue. These designer antibodies, armed with radioactive isotopes, have been found to be highly effective against some types of cancer, but the combination may also be useful in other types of serious disease. This technique is known as radioimmunotherapy (RIT).

A study appearing in the February issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine demonstrates that radioimmunotherapy (RIT) provides a new, highly effective way to kill Cryptococcus neoformans and Histoplasma capsulatum, the fungi responsible for fungal meningitis and pneumonia, using much smaller levels of radiation than required to kill the fungi by external radiation. The study used organism-specific monoclonal antibodies coupled with radioactive isotopes of bismuth or rhenium.

"Our results demonstrate that particulate radiation delivered by organism-specific radiolabeled antibodies is orders of magnitude more efficient in killing human pathogenic fungi than external gamma radiation," stated lead investigator Ekaterina Dadachova of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx. "The results provide strong experimental support for the concept of using RIT as a method to target not only fungal infections but also other microorganisms especially multi-drug resistant ones."

Susceptibility of the Human Pathogenic Fungi Cryptococcus neoformans and Histoplasma capsul
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Contact: Gavin McDonald
gmcdonald@kamber.com
202-955-1250
Society of Nuclear Medicine
12-Feb-2004

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