A molecule in lizard saliva may make it easier to find certain tumors in the pancreas.
Insulinomas — benign tumors that can cause low blood sugar and sudden fainting spells — are notoriously hard to detect using current scanning methods. But by using a tweaked variant of a protein found in Gila monster saliva as a radioactive tracer, a new type of PET scan found the tumors in 95 percent of confirmed cases, researchers report in the October Journal of Nuclear Medicine. PET scans used now to detect such tumors had just a 65 percent success rate, the team found.
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