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An attempt to lower the costs of clinical renal exams is being brought about by a small yet skilled crew at Emory University. A group of researchers led by Dr. Andrew Taylor, Jr. in the division of Nuclear Medicine of the Emory Hospital, has been searching for a new imaging agent that could lower the price of the currently used imaging radiopharmaceutical, Tc-99m MAG3. The group is composed of A. Taylor, MD., L. G. Marzilli, MD., L. Hansen, Ph.D., M. Lipowska, Ph.D., S. Xu, Ph.D., and R. Santaella. The price of the agent per vial is around $150, which is an exorbitant amount of money compared to the competing, less efficient standard which costs around $10 to $20 a vial. Each vial of the technetium based agent lasts only 6 hours after preparing it. The high price of this radiopharmaceutical is the outcome of a commercial patent established by the inventors of this agent.
Technetium-99m has been proven to have excellent imaging characteristics and it exposes the patient a very low degree of radiation. The competing clinical standard is iodine (I-131)based and it does not possess the imaging quality that the technetium (Tc-99m) does, plus it exposes the patient to a much higher degree of radiation. The research group has set a goal to develop another technetium 99m based agent to compete or surpass the MAG3’s qualities therefore lowering the costs of renal studies and improving the availability of renal tests to the public.
From studies and comparisons the Tc-99m MAG3 radiopharmaceutical has been proven to have some faults. Its renal clearance is not as good as the iodine standard and the kidney affinity is not as good as it could be. By changing the organic groups to be attached to the technetium 99m radioisotope, the investigative group has been synthesizing and studying the properties of new promising tubular agents that will help reduce the costs of the renal agents and improve the quality of renal tests world wide.
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