Abstract

This presentation will focus on some non-traditional approaches to synthesize radiolabeled compounds for new targets to image the brain, and aims to show the intricacies of developing PET radiopharmaceuticals from "bench to bedside".  Specifically, cutting-edge approaches and technologies for imaging receptors and signal transduction pathways with PET, as well as our recent work to expand beyond the “amyloid cascade hypothesis” of Alzheimer’s disease, including tauopathies and neuroinflammatory as well as other intracellular targets. The development from medicinal chemistry all the way to a recent first-in-human PET study for imaging people with non-Alzheimer’s disease tauopathies will be presented. Several of the neuroimaging agents have also been applied as oncology probes and our academic-pharma partnerships.  The intricacies of transitioning labeled compounds to PET radiopharmaceuticals and our aspiration to work towards the ultimate, albeit impossible, goal in the field: to radiolabel virtually any compound for PET will be raised as points for discussion.

Biography

Prof. Neil Vasdev is the Director and Chief Radiochemist of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Brain Health Imaging Centre, and the Director of the Azrieli Centre for Neuro-Radiochemistry at CAMH. He is also the endowed Azrieli Chair in Brain and Behaviour, and a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Radiochemistry and Medical Imaging. In addition, he is a full Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Neil started his radiochemistry and neuroimaging training while obtaining his Bachelor degrees (summa cum laude) in Chemistry and Psychology at McMaster University. He concurrently gained valuable experience working as a Chemist at two major pharmaceutical companies: Astra Pharma and Glaxo-Wellcome, as well as a Nuclear Pharmacy.  He continued his training in PET radiochemistry during his Ph.D. dissertation in Chemistry, while supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He continued training with a NSERC postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Nuclear Medicine and Functional Imaging at the E.O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. He began his independent faculty career in radiopharmaceutical sciences at CAMH/University of Toronto in 2004. Prof. Vasdev built his academic research program in Toronto for 7 years and was subsequently recruited to build a new radiopharmaceutical chemistry program and join the leadership of the Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. From 2011-2017 he served as the Director of Radiochemistry and Associate Centre Director at the Massachusetts General Hospital and joined the faculty of Medicine as an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, where he still maintains his faculty appointment.  He was recruited back to CAMH and the University of Toronto in November 2017.

Prof. Vasdev’s research focuses on developing novel radiochemical methods, and translating new PET imaging agents to use in various brain health illnesses. Current targets under investigation are tau protein, which is implicated in diseases with known sex-differences such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias; traumatic brain injuries; brain inflammation in mental illnesses; and cell signaling pathways involved in neuropsychiatric conditions and neuro-oncology.  He has applied such innovations which include novel chemistry methods, radiopharmaceuticals and theranostics for new chemical entity design towards imaging non-traditional targets, as well as advances in instrumentation to the pharmaceutical industry.  Several radiopharmaceuticals from the Vasdev lab have been translated as new PET imaging agents to use in various brain health illnesses for first in human studies.  He has held continuous Canadian tri-council and/or NIH funding, published over 190 peer-reviewed articles, delivered over 100 lectures worldwide and he has received numerous scholarly awards throughout his career. His innovations have resulted in >10 families of patents of which 5 of which are issued and licensed to third parties (pharmaceutical industry) including the method patent for the first tau-PET radiopharmaceutical to be approved by the FDA in 2020, and radiofluorination method patents that are applied for human PET imaging by academic and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. He is also the co-founder of MedChem Imaging, Inc., a contract research organization in Boston.  Prof. Vasdev is also actively involved in leadership for training and innovation translation with several international chemistry and molecular imaging societies.  He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.