Antibiotics, antifungal and
antiviral medications have traditionally been used in the management of
infections. Due to widespread emergence of resistance to antimicrobial medications, and their side effects, there is a growing need for alternative approaches for management of such conditions.
Antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens are on the rise. A cure has not been achieved for
viral infections like
AIDS, while fungal and
parasitic infections are constant threats to the health of general public. The incidence of
opportunistic infections in immunocompromised individuals like HIV patients, patients receiving high dose
steroids,
chemotherapy patients, and organ transplant recipients is on the rise.
Radioimmunotherapy (RIT) has the potential to be a suitable and viable therapeutic modality in the arena of
infection management. Provided the target-associated
antigen is expressed by the target cells and minimally or not expressed by other tissues, selective targeting of radiation to target sites can be theoretically accomplished with relative sparing normal tissues from radiation exposure. In our laboratory we successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of RIT for treating
infectious diseases. We targeted murine
cryptococcosis with a mAb to the Cryptococcus neoformans capsular
glucuronoxylomannan labeled with
Bismuth-213 ((213)Bi) or
Rhenium-188 ((188)Re). We subsequently extended the applicability of RIT for treating bacterial and
viral infections. One of the advantages of using RIT to treat
infections as opposed to
cancer is that, in contrast to
tumor cells, cells expressing microbial
antigens are antigenically very different from host tissues and thus provide the potential for exquisite specificity and low cross-reactivity. Ever increasing incidence of infectious pathologies, exhaustion of antimicrobial possibilities and rising drug resistance calls for use of alternative and novel therapeutic options and we believe RIT is the need of the hour to combat these
infections.