Tools for Clinical Imaging and Technology Transfer
Coordinator: Maria Filomena Botelho
Phone:+351 239480240
Fax: +351 239480258
Email: filomena@ibili.uc.pt
General Objectives
Our research aims at identifying and developing new techniques and probes to provide new and useful physiological information for clinical purposes, and also methodologies to optimise existing imaging technologies, improving their performance, enhancing their applications and allowing a better exploitation of the provided information.
Based on the data given by the existing methodologies in our lab (SPECT System, cell culture, animal & radiopharmaceutical facilities), we are focusing our research on:
- the study of several intracellular signalling pathways involved in malignancy using radiopharmaceutical functional information;
- the understanding of cellular mechanisms that have impact on therapeutical response for oncological patients, namely in drug resistance mechanisms (ABC transporters, protein kinase-C and hypoxia), and new targeted drugs for metabolic radiotherapy (bisphosphonate derivatives labelled with 117mSn, 186Re, 177Lu);
- cytotoxicity and cell viability tests to evaluate some new radiopharmaceuticals for therapy/imaging purposes;
- the development of new devices and instrumentation for imaging body functions;
- the improvement of established methodologies for data acquisition and image processing;
- the study of biological effects of ionising radiation on cell behaviour, comprised in the Biomedical Engineering teaching.
Other research area that have been explored is biomathematics and medical statistics, which the main goal is the validation of tests for anxiety and depression (BAI, DFS, DAI, EMAS, BDI-II) and quality of life measurements of hypertensive patients.
Main Achievements
We focused our research on optimization and development of functional and molecular imaging techniques for oncological applications. We developed delivery systems for imaging and therapy such as liposomes for lung, cardiac and lymphatic imaging studies, and nanocapsules/nanospheres. In order to test the cytotoxicity and cell viability of new drug transporters a macrophage bank was created.
Biodistribution studies of metal based radioligands [M(III) chelates with sugar-based targeting ligands; radiolabeled peptides for tumour diagnostic and therapy; amphiphilic metal complexes with improved efficiency to be used as MRI contrast agents] and of new targeted drugs for metabolic radiotherapy [bisphosphonate derivatives labelled with 117mSn, 186Re, 177Lu)] were performed.
Ionising radiation effects on cellular cultures (rat peritoneal macrophages and human amnyocytes) were tested by cytotoxicity and viability studies and cytogenetic alteration.
Our research was also focused on the development of animal models of human tumours (bone, lung, melanoma and colorectal) to study the multidrug resistance mechanisms mediated, among others, by the overexpression of ABC transporters, using 99mTc-Sestamibi, 99mTc-Tetrofosmin. We showed that they can be used to monitor in vivo the functional activity of MDR-related transporters and to evaluate the efficacy of MDR inhibitors.
New methods for image acquisition and processing were developed: super-resolution algorithm for SPECT; reconstruction technique for PET; camera pose estimation method; software package for diagnosis and progression of Parkinson’s disease; software package for acquisition and control of a Positron Emission Mammography scanner; software setup for controlling a robot used for stress/strain analysis
of dental implants.
All psychometric properties of the anxiety and depression tests were studied with similar results of the original versions.
PI and Researchers
Maria Filomena Botelho
Adriano Rodrigues
Ana Cristina Santos
Carlos Costa Almeida
Emanuel Ponciano
Eunice Carrilho
Francisco Castro e Sousa
José Guilherme Tralhão
Júlio Leite
Nuno Ferreira
Rui Bernardes
M.Sc. and Ph.D. Students
Alexandre Antunes
Ana Margarida Abrantes
Bárbara Oliveiros
Celia Gomes
Filipe Martins
Francisco Caramelo
Ilda Cardoso
João Santos
José Romão
Mafalda Laranjo
Manuel Marques Ferreira
Maria João Carvalho
Pascoal Silva
Paula Alves
Pedro Brito
Pedro Nuno Lopes
Collaborators
Antero Abrunhosa
Alexandre Silva
Isabel Prata
Norberto Pires