Chemistry Seminar with Dr. Nikki Thiele from Oak Ridge National Laboratory at 4:00pm

With recent advances in isotope production, the routine isolation of an array of new and exotic diagnostic and therapeutic radionuclides is becoming feasible. These emerging radionuclides possess diverse radiochemical and radiobiological properties suitable for imaging and treating a range of cancer types, introducing the possibility of creating targeted radiopharmaceutical agents customized to each patient’s disease via judicious choice of radionuclide in conjunction with biological targeting vector. A key bottleneck in the advancement of these radionuclides into the clinic, however, resides in the lack of suitable bifunctional chelating agents that can rapidly bind these radionuclides and stably retain them to targeting vectors in vivo. In this presentation, we will discuss our efforts at ORNL to develop chelation platforms to support the clinical implementation of a selection of emerging alpha-, beta-, and Auger-therapy radionuclides