NOMATEN HYBRID-SEMINAR June 16: Translational development of PET radiotracers for infectious diseases imaging

Infectious diseases are responsible of millions of deaths worldwide every year. If most of them benefit from treatments/vaccins, resurgence (whooping cough), resisting strains (tuberculosis), persistence (HIV) and new pandemic burden (COVID-19) remain. Virus or bacteria/host interactions are often poorly understood and sensitive in vivo methods to evaluate treatment/vaccin efficacy are lacking. In that field, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) has emerged as a minimally invasive and quantitative imaging technique to decipher infection mechanisms at the whole-body scale.[1] At the CEA-SHFJ and the CEA-IDMIT, we develop radiotracers, i.e small molecules or biologics labeled with positron emitters such as fluorine-18, copper-64 or zirconium-89, to track infectious reservoirs and understand drug/infection/host interactions.[2-3].

Fabien CAILLÉ is a senior radiochemist and head of the radiotracer production unit at the Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot (SHFJ) of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Saclay, France. He completed a PhD in organic and physico-chemistry in 2011 dedicated to the synthesis and characterization of bimodal contrast agents for MRI and optical imaging. In 2012, Fabien Caillé moved to Molecular Neuroimaging LCC (New Haven CT, USA) to work in collaboration with the University of Yale to the design of original radiotracers for PET imaging of neurodegenerative disorders. Since 2013, he holds a researcher position at the CEA-SHFJ, focusing on the development of new radiolabeling methodologies and translational research for PET.