Yeast-Based Radiotracers

Saccharomyces cerevisiae (commonly known as Brewer’s or Baker’s yeast) is a versatile source of bioactive peptides, proteins, and beta-glucans with notable pharmacological and immunomodulatory activities. Owing to the similarity of many yeast-derived proteins to human counterparts, this organism plays a significant role in biotechnology, drug discovery, and medical research. These biomolecules have the potential to enhance immune responses, exhibit anticancer effects, and serve as promising agents for targeted therapies. Optimizing production and purification methods, combined with bioinformatics-based peptide design, can further improve their therapeutic potential. Radiolabeled yeast proteins present considerable opportunities for targeted radionuclide therapy and diagnostic imaging (PET/SPECT) by enabling precise tumor targeting and biodistribution analysis.

In this study, S. cerevisiae will be investigated for its active biomolecules, which will be extracted, characterized, radiolabeled, and assessed in vitro for their potential as novel radiotracers in cancer management. The expected impact of this research includes advancing the development of low-cost, safe, and highly specific radiotracers, contributing to improved cancer diagnosis and targeted treatment strategies, and fostering the integration of yeast-based bioproducts into clinical oncology applications. Preliminary findings indicate that S. cerevisiae binds selectively to the surface of cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) [Fig. 1], with no detectable interaction observed in normal cells (MCF-10A) [Fig. 2]. These results suggest a potential cancer-specific binding mechanism, and further investigations are currently in progress.