Pillarsetty Group

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My research group is dedicated to the development of novel radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic applications, and, aiding clinical translation of these novel radiopharmaceuticals to the clinic. The current research efforts are focused on 1) Developing imaging biomarkers for characterizing dysfunctional signaling pathways; 2) Liposome based imaging and therapeutic agents for applications in imaging and drug delivery to specific sites such as bone marrow, lymph nodes and tumors; 3) PET labeled drug analogs as surrogates for drugs to understand drug pharmacokinetics and drug delivery to the target tissue, and 4) Development of novel radiochemical methods and precursors.  While pursuing these goals, we actively contribute to clinical translation of radiopharmaceuticals by developing simple and GMP like radiosynthetic methods and/or performing proof of concept studies to provide biological basis and rationale for clinical translation of novel PET probes at MSKCC. My group has played critical role in translating several PET probes including [124I]-PU-H71 (PET probe that targets Hsp90), [124I]-PU-AD (Hsp90 targeting probe with better BBB permeability for brain tumor and neurological conditions), [124I]-FIAU, [18F]-FEAU, [18F]-FIAU (PET probes for imaging HSV1-tk gene expression), [18F]-MFBG (probe for imaging neuroblastoma), [18F]-FDSTB (PET surrogate for drug Dasatinib) that have been developed at MSKCC for different oncological applications.