2021 Undergraduate Summer Research Program Participant
Home Department: undeclared
Mentor: Katherine Ferrara (Radiology - Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford)
“Improved Synthesis of a Novel Cu-64 Multichelator for PET Imaging and Assessment in vivo”
PET (positron emission tomography) utilizes radioactive tags to track the pharmacokinetics of therapeutic adeno-associated viruses (AAVs). The positron emitter Cu-64 is well-suited to monitor AAVs in blood and yields the best PET images when incorporated into multichelators. Alex’s research is focusing on optimizing multichelator performance by proposing new methods of synthesis and evaluating functionality and the effects of PEG image quality in animal models.