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Webinar: Radiolabeled Sugars for Imaging of Fungal Infections

Attend a tech opportunity webinar on May 28th by Dima Hammoud and Rolf Swenson

May 28, 2025 | 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

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The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center (NIHCC) is seeking research co-development partners and/or licensees for a newly developed fungal-specific imaging agent. Contact Joseph.Conrad@nih.gov to request a recording of our May 2025 webinar to learn about the technology and hear from NIH inventors, Dima A. Hammoud, MD, and Rolf Swenson, Ph.D.. 

About the Technology

The Problem:

Fungal infections remain a major health burden with very high mortality and morbidity in immunosuppressed cancer and transplant patients, and in some congenital immunodeficiencies. A recent report estimated global mortality from fungal disease to be greater than 1.6 million, which is similar to that of tuberculosis; and greater than 3-fold that of malaria. Yet, despite the magnitude of the problem, diagnosing a fungal infection in a patient is difficult because there are currently no clinically available fungal-specific imaging agents.

Standard of Care:

Currently, 18F-fluorodeoxglucose (FDG), a positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracer which is used to help diagnose cancer and neurological diseases, is being used to diagnose fungal and bacterial infections. However, FDG has a challenge of not being able to differentiate between a tumor, infection and inflammation. It also cannot differentiate between a variety of fungal pathogens or differentiate fungi from other pathogens such as bacteria.

Researchers investigated varying approaches to develop fungus-specific imaging including targeted antibodies, 99mTc-labeled MORF oligomers targeting fungal ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and radiolabeled siderophores. Many of these approaches are still in early-stage development, and need testing in humans, so a new fungal-specific ligand-based imaging agent is still needed.

The Solution:

Researchers at the NIH Clinical Center developed a new fungal-specific imaging ligand that exploits fungal-specific metabolic pathways absent in mammalian cells or bacteria.

An imaging agent that uses fungi as food; this picture shows the chemistry of a radio-labeled version of a sugar

FCB:

  • Shows specific uptake by pathogenic fungi, mostly molds (Aspergillus, mucor species) as it is hydrolyzed only by fungal beta-glucosidases and is not metabolized by bacterial or human enzymes.
  • Demonstrates a high fungal infection imaging signal compared to normal tissues.
  • Can be used to detect the presence of a fungus shortly after infection, thus providing early, specific diagnosis without the need for invasive procedures, such as biopsies, fine-needle aspirates or bronchoalveolar lavage.
  • Can be used to monitor the infection in vivo and assess whether there is response to antifungal treatments in real time.

Competitive Advantages

  • Rapid diagnosis of live fungal infections in any patient.
  • Distinguish between fungal infection and other diseases such as tumors, inflammation or bacterial infections.
  • Capacity for national and international distribution, via an easy-synthesis chemistry kit.

Commercial Applications:

  • Fungal metabolism-based imaging agent, specific for pathogenic fungal molds versus current Standard of Care.
  • Non-invasive patient imaging procedure providing rapid diagnosis and ability to monitor treatment.
  • Easily synthesized from commercially available FDG.

Who should attend?

  • Business development professionals
  • Parties interested in scouting for technologies to diagnose fungal infections
  • Biotech/pharma/academia researchers
  • Investors and entrepreneurs

Why attend?

  • Assess co-developing the technology
  • Interact with the inventor, ask questions and provide feedback
  • Learn how to partner with the NIH facilitated by the NCI Technology Transfer Center.

Learn more about the technology.

If you are interested in learning more about how to co-develop and/or license this technology, please contact Michael.Salgaller@nih.gov.

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