The uptake of the radiopharmaceutical fluoro methyl tyrosine (FMT) on PET imaging in patients with pulmonary adenocarcinoma is a significant independent predictor of poor prognosis, according to research published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

“We found that FMT uptake correlated with the expression of L-type amino acid transporter 1 (LAT1) and that both LAT1 expression and FMT uptake were significantly higher in non-adenocarcinomatous disease than in adenocarcinoma,” wrote the authors of the study.