A spoonful of sugar helps infection detection

Congratulations to Kiyoko Takemiya, a postdoctoral fellow in Emory’s Division of Cardiology, working with W. Robert Taylor. At the recent American College of Cardiology meeting in Washington DC, she won first place in the competition for an ACC Foundation/ Herman K. Gold Young Investigators Award in Molecular and Cellular Cardiology.

The title of her research presentation was: A Novel Imaging Probe for the Detection of Subclinical Bacterial Infections Involving Cardiac Devices.

Takemiya, Taylor, and their colleagues (including Mark Goodman and Niren Murthy, formerly at Georgia Tech and now at UC Berkeley) developed a fluorescent probe that allows the detection of small levels of bacteria on cardiac devices. The probe was tested in rats, some of which had relatively mild local S. aureus infections. The fluorescent probe (PET is also under investigation) makes use of the properties of maltohexaose, a sugar that is taken up by bacteria but not mammalian cells.

Infection rates for implantable cardiac devices such as pacemakers have been rising, according to a 2012 paper in NEJM.

Posted on by Quinn Eastman in Heart Leave a comment

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Quinn Eastman

Science Writer, Research Communications qeastma@emory.edu 404-727-7829 Office

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