Keynote speaker : François Bénard, MD, FRCPC

Senior Executive Director, Research, BC Cancer Research Institute 

Professor, Department of Radiology, University of British Columbia 

Associate Dean, Research, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia 

Title
Radiolabeled peptides in oncology - from bench to bedside

Summary

There is a major renaissance in the development of diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals in oncology, fueling research and driving investments and growth in the field of nuclear oncology. In this presentation, we will review the radiopharmaceutical drug development process, from initial concept to introduction into clinical trials.

The first step is the identification of a suitable protein target, which must be selectively expressed on cancer cells, ideally abundantly overexpressed at the cell membrane or be present at high concentration in the tumour microenvironment. 

We will review real-world examples of various iterative steps involved in the optimization of peptide-based radiopharmaceuticals,  We will subsequently discuss the regulatory path required to translate novel radiopharmaceuticals into early phase clinical trials and towards commercialization.

Biography

François Bénard is a distinguished scientist at the BC Cancer Research Institute and Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of British Columbia. He holds the BC Leadership Chair in Functional Cancer Imaging. As a clinician scientist, his research interests are in positron emission tomography (PET), nuclear medicine, cancer imaging and radiopharmaceutical therapy. His team developed several new radiopharmaceuticals targeting tumour receptors, notably peptides and small molecule ligands. He initiated the program that developed cyclotron production of ^99mTc, which completed clinical trials at multiple sites in Canada. He has established extensive multidisciplinary collaborations, and he and his colleagues were awarded the 2015 Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Engineering by NSERC. He is the principal investigator of a new $23.7M Canadian initiative entitled ‘Rare Isotopes to Transform Cancer Therapy’, funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund - Transformation program.