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Current Pharmaceutical Design

Editor-in-Chief

ISSN (Print): 1381-6128
ISSN (Online): 1873-4286

Development of Specific Radiopharmaceuticals for Infection Imaging by Targeting Infectious Micro-organisms

Author(s): Guillermina Ferro-Flores, Blanca E. Ocampo-Garcia and Laura Melendez-Alafort

Volume 18, Issue 8, 2012

Page: [1098 - 1106] Pages: 9

DOI: 10.2174/138161212799315821

Price: $65

Abstract

Infectious diseases remain a major health problem and cause of death worldwide. A variety of radiopharmaceuticals are used for the imaging of infections and inflammation in the practice of nuclear medicine. Long-term clinical use has shown that the majority of radiolabeled probes cannot distinguish between inflammation and infection. Gallium-67-citrate binds to bacteria, but also to proteins ac-cumulating at both sterile inflammation and bacterial infection sites. Other agents are used to interact with receptors or domains on circu-lating and infiltrating leukocytes or to label them directly. However, these probes cannot distinguish between infection and inflammation because they are not specific to infectious micro-organisms. This review examines the recent developments and applications of radiola-beled specific agents, such as antiviral drugs, antifungal, antibiotics and antimicrobial peptides, to visualize infectious foci by targeting viruses, fungi or bacteria.

Keywords: Radiolabeled antibiotics, antimicrobial peptides, antiviral drugs, technetium-99m-ubiquicidin, scintigraphy, radiopharmaceuticals, inflammation, radiolabeled probes, Gallium-67-citrate, leukocytes


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