Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Mark Goodman

I3 Venture awards info

Emory is full of fledgling biomedical proto-companies. Some of them are actual corporations with employees, while others are ideas that need a push to get them to that point. Along with the companies highlighted by the Emory Biotech Consulting Club, Dean Sukhatme’s recent announcement of five I3 Venture research awards gives more examples of early stage research projects with commercial potential.

This is the third round of the I3 awards; the first two were Wow! (basic discovery) and Synergy II/Nexus (promoting interdisciplinary collaboration). For the five Venture awards, the Dean’s office is providing a total of $100,000. The companies will then use the momentum to seek larger amounts of funding from various sources. Lab Land is still collecting information on the projects:

 

Faculty Name Technology Relevant links
Ray Dingledine + Thota Ganesh Pyrefin EP2 receptor antagonists vs epilepsy, pain, inflammation New class of potential drugs inhibits inflammation in brain
Mark Goodman, W. Robert Taylor Microbial Medical PET imaging agent for detection of bacterial infections Spoonful of sugar helps infection detection
Carlos Moreno + Christian Larsen ResonanceDx Miniaturized rapid creatinine test for point of care use  
Edmund Waller + Taofeek Owonikoko Cambium Oncology Enhancing responsiveness of pancreatic cancer to immunotherapy The Company’s lead compound was effective in animal studies for pancreatic cancer, melanoma, leukemia and lymphoma.
Chunhui Xu TK High-throughput screening for antiarrhythmic drugs using cardiomyocytes Fetal alcohol toxicity – in a dish // Cardiac ‘disease in a dish’ models advance arrhythmia research
Posted on May 29, 2019 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer, Immunology, Neuro Leave a comment

FDA approves Emory-developed cancer imaging probe

A cancer imaging agent that was originally developed at Emory was approved on Friday, May 27 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Axumin, a PET (positron emission tomography) imaging agent, is indicated for diagnosis of recurrent prostate cancer in men who have elevated PSA levels after previous treatment. Axumin, now being commercialized by UK-based Blue Earth Diagnostics, is also known as 18F-fluciclovine or FACBC (an abbreviation for anti-1-amino-3-[18F]fluorocyclobutane-1- carboxylic acid).

goodman-schuster

Mark Goodman, PhD (left) and David Schuster, MD (right)

Imaging using axumin/fluciclovine is expected to help doctors detect and localize recurrent prostate cancer, and could guide biopsy or the planning of additional treatment. Fluciclovine was originally developed at Emory by Mark Goodman and Timothy Shoup, who is now at Massachusetts General Hospital.

The earliest research on fluciclovine in the 1990s was on its use for imaging brain tumors, and it received a FDA “orphan drug” designation for the diagnosis of glioma in 2015. About a decade ago, Emory researchers stumbled upon fluciclovine’s utility with prostate cancer, while investigating its activity in a patient who appeared to have renal cancer, according to radiologist David Schuster, who has led several clinical studies testing fluciclovine.

“This led us to see if this radiotracer would be good for looking at prostate cancer, specifically because of its low native urinary excretion,” Schuster is quoted as saying in the radiology newsletter Aunt Minnie. “If you look at the history of medical science, it is taking advantage of the unexpected.”

Early research on the probe was supported by Nihon Mediphysics, and later support for clinical research on FACBC/fluciclovine came from the National Cancer Institute, the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia Cancer Coalition. [Both Emory and Goodman are eligible to receive royalties from its commercialization]. Additional information here.

References for two completed studies on fluciclovine in recurrent prostate cancer

Odewole OA et al. Comparison with CT imaging (2016) 

Schuster DM et al. Head to head comparison with ProstaScint (2014). Read more

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

Promising probe for detecting recurrent prostate cancer

Part of the new Winship magazine feature on prostate cancer focuses on a PET imaging probe called FACBC, which was developed by radiologists at Emory. 18F-FACBC (anti-1-amino-3-[18F]fluorocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid, also called “fluciclovine”) has a lengthening track record in detecting recurrent prostate cancer.

Structure of FACBC, from patent application.

Usually in PET imaging, radioactive glucose is injected into the body, and since cancer cells have a sweet tooth, they take up a lot of the radioactive tracer. But plenty of the tracer also appears in the urine, complicating prostate cancer detection efforts, since the prostate is so close to the bladder. In contrast, FACBC is readily taken up by prostate cancer cells, but doesn’t appear as much in urine.

Because of space considerations, we did not include David Schuster’s description of how FACBC’s utility in prostate was first discovered. Several years ago, he and Mark Goodman had begun investigating the probe’s potential in imaging brain tumors and kidney tumors, and used it with a patient with a large renal mass and many enlarged lymph nodes, as described in the radiology newsletter Aunt Minnie. Read more

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

High-contrast brain tumor imaging

This month’s intriguing images come from radiation oncologist Ian Crocker and colleagues. Each one shows a patient with a glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. The patient’s brain was scanned in two ways: on the left, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and on the right, PET (positron emission tomography), using a probe developed at Emory. We can see that the tumor’s PET signal is more distinct than the tumor’s appearance on MRI.

Since the 1990s, Mark Goodman, John Votaw and colleagues at Emory’s Center for Systems Imaging have been developing the probe FACBC (fluoro-1-amino-3-cyclobutyl carboxylic acid) as a probe for the detection of tumors.

Read more

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment