Scientific Seminar Series

Clinical and pre-clinical imaging techniques, such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET), have the ability to visualise and monitor molecular events in vivo, providing a functional ''picture" of fundamental biochemical and physiological processes. PET radiochemistry and imaging is a challenging, multi-disciplinary field that frequently requires innovative synthetic solutions to prepare evermore structurally complex radiopharmaceuticals. The objective of this presentation is to highlight some recent research on the manufacture and biological evaluation of target-specific PET radiopharmaceuticals for both pre-clinical and clinical PET imaging investigations in a variety of different disease areas.

Canine detection is a powerful tool for identifying pathogen infection-or disease-specific VOCs, with dogs able to detect both infectious and non-infectious diseases in humans. This pilot study demonstrated that trained detection dogs could accurately distinguish between perspiration samples from SARS-CoV-2-infected patients and negative controls, yielding a high diagnostic sensitivity (95.3%) and specificity (97.1%) in controlled settings. The success of this study led to the deployment of detection dogs at Sydney and Adelaide airports, where they outperformed nasopharyngeal PCR tests by detecting positive individuals at an early stage of infection.

Professor Christopher Sweeney is the inaugural Director of the South Australian immunoGENomicsCancer Institute (SAIGENCI) at the University of Adelaide.

He received his medical degree from the University of Adelaide and completed an internship at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Professor Sweeney did his residency in internal medicine at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Centre and a fellowship in hematology/oncology at Indiana University Medical Centre. Professor Sweeney joined the Lank Centre for Genitourinary Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School in 2009.