Congratulations to UBC Chemistry and TRIUMF graduate student, Eric Price, who was recently awarded the 2013 Berson-Yalow Award by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). The award, which will be formally presented during the 60th SNMMI Annual Meeting on June 10th, honors researchers who have submitted an abstract to the SNMMI Annual Meeting, making the most significant contributions to basic or clinical radioassays. The award winning abstract submitted by Eric, jointly supervised by Chris Orvig at UBC Chemistry and Michael J. Adam of TRIUMF, an adjunct professor at UBC Chemistry, was titled, H4octapa-trastuzumab: An acyclic chelator-immunoconjugate with superior properties to DOTA for In-111/Lu-177 imaging and therapy, and explores pre-clinical applications of a novel chelator for use in radioactive imaging and therapy of cancer. The new chelator, H4octapa, was attached to a cancer-targeting antibody and its properties were studied in a mouse model of ovarian cancer. The results of these experiments demonstrated significant improvements over the clinically used “gold standard” chelator (DOTA), suggesting that H4octapa has significant potential to be used for applications in radiochemistry and nuclear medicine for imaging and treatment of a variety of cancers. This project was completed in collaboration with Dr. Jason S. Lewis at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
