The goal of the NextGen Precision Health & Ellis Fischel Cancer Center Science Seminar is to highlight transdisciplinary precision research taking place in the cancer field, provide opportunities for collaboration among researchers to build their own research efforts and promote clinical/researcher activity across the University of Missouri System and our partners.
For questions about this event, please reach out to Veronica Lemme.
"The Evolution and Future of Theranostics Development: A Radiochemist’s Perspective"
Speaker: Carolyn J. Anderson, PhD, Professor of Chemistry and Radiology; Director, Molecular Imaging and Theranostics Center, University of Missouri
Date: May 18, 2023, 4:30-5:30 p.m.
Description
Over the past few decades, the field of targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy (TRT) with radiometals has grown tremendously, with many agents translated to human studies and a few reaching FDA approval from 2018 to 2022. This presentation will provide a brief historical overview of how 177Lu-dotatate (neuroendocrine tumors) and 177Lu-vipivotide tetraxetan (metastatic prostate cancer) were developed. This process has paved the way for new generations of targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy agents to move through the pipeline to clinical approval more quickly. Challenges for translation include producing enough of these radionuclides for routine clinical use, and stably chelating radiometals, which is required to minimize toxicity to normal organs. There is renewed excitement about TRT agents labeled with low-energy electron emitters, an example being reactor-produced Tb-161, which has very similar decay properties to Lu-177, with the added bonus of potent low-energy electrons when internalized in tumor cells. Innovations in radionuclide production and the discovery of new chelators that are versatile for many radiometals will be highlighted.
About the Speaker
Dr. Carolyn J. Anderson received her PhD in inorganic chemistry at Florida State University, after which, she moved to the Washington University in St. Louis as a postdoctoral fellow under Professor Michael J Welch’s mentorship. Her research for the past 30-plus years has involved developing receptor-targeted agents labeled with radiometals for imaging and therapy of cancer and other diseases. Her research laid a foundation for the growth of radiometal-based agents for imaging and therapy (“theranostics”). After 20 years at Washington University where she was a professor of radiology, she moved to the University of Pittsburgh, where the focus was on imaging immune cells in diseases that included cancer, tuberculosis and sickle cell disease. Dr. Anderson’s unique expertise in radiochemistry and medical applications in cancer and other diseases synergize with the ongoing research at the University of Missouri, where she moved to in 2020. Her goal for the Molecular Imaging and Theranostics Center (MITC) is to establish a hub for collaborators throughout the MU campus and beyond to discover novel radiolabeled agents that can see and/or treat cancer. Dr. Anderson has received numerous honors, including the Michael J. Welch Award (2012) and the Paul C. Aebersold award (2020) from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, a Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy of Radiology Research (2014) and the Glenn T. Seaborg award in Nuclear Chemistry from the American Chemical Society (2022).