Sydney, Oct 6 : A new imaging agent could help to save innumerable lives by tracking melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, at an early stage.

Ivan Greguric and colleagues working within the Cooperative Research Consortium (CRC) for Biomedical Imaging Development note that about 130,000 new cases of malignant melanoma occur worldwide every year.

Patients have the best chance of survival with early diagnosis and prompt treatment. However, positron emission tomography (PET) scans used for diagnosis sometimes miss small cancers, delaying diagnosis and treatment.

The scientists' search for better ways of diagnosis led them to a new group of radioactive imaging agents, called fluoronicotinamides, which they tested in lab mice that had melanoma.

The most promising substance revealed melanoma cells with greater accuracy than imaging agents now in use, the scientists note.

As a result, this substance could become a "superior" PET imaging agent for improving the diagnosis and monitoring the effectiveness of treatment of melanoma, they say.

Clinical trials with this new agent are now scheduled for 2010, said a CRC release.

The study was published in the September issue of the Journal of the Medicinal Chemistry.