Nationality: Norwegian
Background: I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, UK (MChem Medicinal and Biological chemistry), after which I worked for just under four years as a peptide scientist at Almac Sciences, custom manufacturing peptides for research use.
My research interests: Improving methodology to provide personalized healthcare, through the development of novel techniques for cancer detection and intervention
My PhD goals: Design realistic glycopeptide models to mimic cancer-associated MUC1 aberrant glycosylation. Use these models as templates to synthesize new high-affinity MIPs and characterize the synthesized MIPs by by novel ACE methods. Hopefully, learn Italian as well!
My hobbies: Reading, Jewellery-making, Cinema
My project in MIPrecise: MIPs targeting cancer-associated glycan motifs
Master thesis: Optimisation of the Radiosynthesis of [18F]LW223: a PET Radiotracer for the Translocator Protein (TSPO)
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a molecular imaging technique which provides the quantitative in vivo visualisation of biological processes. The Translocator protein (18 kDa) (TSPO), shows upregulation in certain cancers states (breast, ovarian, colon) and brain injury, therefore can be used as a disease biomarker and imaged using a PET tracer. Tracer design has proven non-trivial due to a polymorphism in TSPO expression, but the tracer [18F]LW223 has shown promising characteristics such as high affinity in human brain and heart tissue for TSPO, and low sensitivity to the TSPO polymorphism. This paper investigated the optimisation of the radiosynthesis to produce [18F]LW223 using a new a new manual labelling method created to dry [18F]fluoride and perform the radiosynthesis. An improvised radio-TLC method was also devised to quantify the reaction conversion. Finally, an automated synthesiser method for the GE TRACERlab FXFN was devised using the optimised reaction conditions, ready for use in future production of [18F]LW223.