Eighteen Young researchers from all over the world joined in Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear to attend the PRISMAP training course on “Radiopharmaceutical Science – from Radiochemistry to Preclinical Studies” that took place from 11th to 15th September.
This training course aimed to motivate the participants to the radiopharmaceutical sciences area. For that, the main goal of the course was to provide the participants with scientific knowledge and practical skills to understand the most important aspects required to bring potential radiopharmaceuticals from the bench to the bedside.
The course was organized over 5 days and consisted on 2 days of lectures that were presented by scientists from C2TN/IST and international experts, followed by 2 days of practical sessions and a visit to the facilities of the Nuclear Medicine Service of Fundação Champalimaud.
The lectures on hot topics of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences, included radiolabeling chemistry, synthesis and conjugation of biomolecules, in silico approaches, methods for preclinical studies with cellular and animal models, and preclinical dosimetry. These theoretical classes were complemented by laboratory sessions to exemplify the several steps involved in the synthesis and evaluation of a potential radiopharmaceutical. The practical sessions covered the synthesis, characterization, in vitro and in vivo evaluation of a radiolabeled compound with potential interest as a radiopharmaceutical. Exemplarily, the practical sessions focused on a PSMA (prostate specific membrane antigen) inhibitor labeled with an imaging radionuclide, which emerged in recent years as a promising scaffold to obtain target-specific radiopharmaceuticals for prostate cancer theranostics.
The course was organized under the scope of the PRISMAP project (www.prismap.eu), funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 101008571).