By engineering a special molecule to track certain immune cells in the body, scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have invented a litmus test for the effectiveness of a newly devised cancer therapy. With the tracer, doctors can theoretically see if a cancer vaccine has successfully galvanized T cells into a protective state, though the research conducted in this study was exclusively in mice. The {read more here}

PET biomarker–positive patients (essentially patients with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease), had “a significantly increased size of the foveal avascular zone. It was robustly positive,” Gregory Van Stavern, MD, a neurologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, said here at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 2018 Annual Meeting. {read more here}

The May issue of the PET Center of Excellence newsletter is now available. The lead article covers FDG PET/CT for noninfectious causes of fever of unknown origin. The newsletter also includes articles on the launch of a new PET phantom program for compliance with new Joint Commission requirements, interpretative criteria for PSMA-targeted PET imaging and more.  {read more here}

Researchers from Stanford University have presented the first technique that simultaneously assesses a variety of early metabolic and cellular markers of joint tissue health in patients at risk for early knee osteoarthritis (OA). {read more here}