Memorial Hospital Research Laboratories

The Thomas Reiner Lab

Research

Thomas Reiner, PhD

The Reiner Lab research program revolves around the development, validation and translation of novel imaging agents. Our research is firmly rooted in the preclinical research space, but we also aggressively pursue translational clinical projects. One of our key achievements is the development of a quantitative small molecule imaging platform for PARP1, yielding several translated imaging agents that have originated in our lab. One of our imaging agents, PARPi-FL, a fluorescent intraoperative probe, entered clinical trials in March 2017 (IND#133,109, NCT03085147). A second translated drug, [¹⁸F]PARPi, a quantitative PET imaging agent, was approved for clinical trials in August 2018 and November 2019 (IND#139974; NCT03631017 and NCT04173104, respectively). Phase I data for both agents has been published in Nature Biomedical Engineering (Kossatz et al 2020) and Clinical Cancer Research (Schöder et al, 2020). A radiotherapeutic version of our PARP1 imaging agents is being tested in mouse models of cancer.

While our previous work was in large part focused on the detection, delineation and treatment of cancer, we also interrogate other physiologically relevant markers. These agents help us to understand the molecular mechanisms of drug action, shedding new light on tumor cell pathology and helping to predict why some patients respond well to a particular treatment regimen, while others do not.

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Publications

Kossatz S, Pirovano G, Demétrio DSFP, Strome A, Sunny S, Zanoni D, Mauguen A, Carney B, Brand C, Shah V, Ramanajinappa RD, Hedne N, Birur P, Sihag S, Ghossein RA, Gonen M, Strome M, Suresh A, Kuriakose M, Ganly I, Patel S, Reiner T. Validation of the use of a fluorescent PARP1 inhibitor for the detection of oral, oropharyngeal and oesophageal epithelial cancers. Nature biomedical engineering. 2020;4(3):272.

Schöder H, França PDS, Nakajima R, Burnazi E, Roberts S, Brand C, Grkovski M, Mauguen A, Dunphy MP, Ghossein RA, Lyashchenko SK, Lewis JS, O’Donoghue JA, Ganly I, Patel SG, Lee NY, Reiner T. Safety and Feasibility of PARP1/2 Imaging with (18)F-PARPi in Patients with Head and Neck Cancer. Clin Cancer Res. 2020;26(13):3110-6.

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People

Thomas Reiner, PhD

Chemist and imaging specialist Thomas Reiner develops and translates imaging agents and radiotherapeutics for earlier and improved diagnosis, stratification and treatment of malignant tumors.
PhD, Technical University of Munich, Germany