Miniature ‘plug-and-play’ platform could accelerate development of new PET tracers
Researchers at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine are developing a miniature “plug-and-play” platform designed to speed up the production of new PET radiotracers.
The project, which is aimed at making it easier and less costly to develop molecular imaging agents, is supported by a four-year, $2.6 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health. Led by Kai Chen, PhD, professor of research radiology, radiation oncology, and pharmacology and pharmaceutical sciences, the team is developing a system that combines a universal radioactive building block with different biological molecules to create new radiotracers.
While researchers continue to identify potential biomarkers for disease, converting those discoveries into PET tracers can be difficult. Radiolabeling biological molecules is technically demanding and traditionally requires specialized equipment and facilities.
The USC team's approach is designed to address that bottleneck by combining two chemistry techniques—click chemistry and droplet radiochemistry—on a miniature platform. Click chemistry allows molecules to be rapidly joined together, while droplet radiochemistry performs reactions using extremely small volumes of material. The researchers are working with collaborators at University of California, Los Angeles, to incorporate both approaches into a small chip-based device.
“Because everything will be concentrated on a tiny chip, we hope to produce radiotracers quickly and efficiently with less reliance on traditional large-scale equipment and facilities,” Chen said in a news announcement.
The team has already conducted preliminary research with several cancer-targeted tracers. One targets fibroblast activation protein, a biomarker found at elevated levels in many tumors, while others are being developed for liver and prostate cancer. The preliminary findings thus far demonstrate that click chemistry can be used to rapidly generate tracers targeting multiple cancer biomarkers on a small scale. The new grant will allow the team to expand the approach to additional targets and further develop the production platform.
The system could eventually make radiotracer development more automated and reduce the equipment and resources required to produce new imaging agents. That could support the development of more specialized PET tracers, with potential applications extending beyond oncology. The platform also could be adapted to produce radiotracers targeting neurological diseases and other conditions.
Over the next couple of years, the research team plans to optimize the device and test a broader range of tracers.
Read more about their work here.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She began covering the medical imaging industry for Innovate Healthcare in 2021.