For prostate cancer patients who have rising levels of PSA (a cancer indicator) even after radical prostatectomy, early treatment makes a difference. In a study featured in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, Australian researchers demonstrate that PET scans can identify which of these prostate cancer patients would benefit from salvage radiation treatment (SRT). {read more here}

Researchers at Cinvestav in Mexico have produced a promising vaccine candidate against Alzheimer’s disease by targeting the a myloid-beta (Aβ) peptide. The vaccine, created by a team led by Miguel Angel Gómez Lin, used an Aβ epitope – a molecule-specific receptor – that is known to be present in the full-length amyloid-beta peptide, as well as in its truncated version, which is often found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. After immunization, Aβ-specific antibodies from the mice were isolated and found to effectively bind to amyloid plaques in both mice and human brains (Inflammopharmacol doi: 10.1007/s10787-017-0408-2). {read more here}

“We found that dopamine, a chemical that’s important for learning and enjoyment, is affected in people who had early brain injury, but not in the way a lot of people would have thought—dopamine levels were actually lower in these individuals,” Foudist-Walsh et al. wrote. “This could be important to how we think about treating people who suffered early brain damage and develop mental illness.” {read more here}

In this study, PET-CT scans were used to measure metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG), two measures to estimate the total amount of tumor material distributed throughout the body, called tumor burden. {read more here}