Peptides as Contrast Imaging Agents for MRI and PET

Brian Austen, St George's Hospital, London, UK
Keynote speakers:
Stephen Mather, Barts and The London School of Medicine, UK
Robert Muller, University of Mons-Hainaut, Belgium
Invited speakers:
Adriano Duatti, University of Ferrara, Italy
Tony Gee, GlaxoSmithKline, UK
Jon Dilworth, University of Oxford, UK
Franklin Aigbirhio, University of Cambridge, UK
Jean Claude Reubi, University of Bern, Switzerland
Programme:
Monday 3 August (morning and afternoon)
Symposium Information
Peptides and peptide derivatives are increasingly playing a role in non-invasive imaging in diagnosis and therapy, particularly in oncology, using PET or MRI. Peptides, in their sequence, contain the specificities required for binding to targets at specific locations in the body, or in discreet pathologies. Even intracellular targets can be imaged with the attachment of cell-penetration peptides. Attached rare-earths enhance the T1 and T2 resolved images obtained by MRI to allow imaging of disease-specific lesions; whereas radiopeptides are imaged by PET.
A variety of speakers will describe recent advances made in this cross-disciplinary research area, which promotes collaborations between physicists, chemists, biologists and clinicians.
