Over the last few decades, there has been remarkable progress in our understanding of cellular and molecular immune responses in a diverse range of biomedical disease processes.
Conditions like inflammatory bowel disorder have been linked to auto-immune and pro-inflammatory disease processes indicative of chronic illnesses. Moreover, new cancer immunotherapies have revolutionized treatment by activating the patient’s immune system, engaging specific signaling pathways, and directing immune responses toward targeted activity.
Cytokines play a key role in this immune response cascade and in determining the type of response (e.g., Type 1 or Type 2).
Currently, the techniques for staging clinical disease progress with these underlying inflammatory processes are constrained and predominantly dependent on the invasive examination of macroscopic cellular and organ tissue damage.
Additionally, although certain cancer immunotherapy treatments have demonstrated considerable effectiveness, there remains a pressing need for enhanced methodologies to promptly confirm the activation of the host response. Such advancements would greatly facilitate the optimization of treatment strategies from the earliest stages.
Cytokine PET imaging has the potential to detect these processes at the early stages of disease in a non-invasive and targeted manner. This webinar will discuss research into developing PET agents targeting cytokines in preclinical disease models and assessing tumor response to immunotherapy and inflammatory diseases.
Who Should Attend
This webinar is ideal for researchers focused on inflammatory diseases, PET tracer development, and cancer therapies, particularly appealing to nuclear imaging specialists, immunologists, and cancer biologists.
About the Speaker
Nerissa Viola, Ph.D., is a tenured associate professor at the Department of Oncology at the School of Medicine at Wayne State University. She is the Leader of the Molecular Imaging Program at Karmanos Cancer Institute. Her research is dedicated to the creation of PET radiopharmaceuticals for diagnosis and treatment.