Development and preclinical evaluation of innovative NANOBODY® based radioprobes for imaging and targeted radionuclide therapy.

The research project will be a collaborative effort between the laboratory for radiopharmaceutical research, KU Leuven and Ablynx, a Sanofi company. With respective expertise in radiopharmacy and NANOBODY® technology, the research will be focused on the development and the preclinical evaluation of NANOBODY® based radioprobes. Nanobodies are recombinant single-domain antibody fragments that surpass many limitations of regular antibodies. With their approximate size of 15 kDa, they are considered as the smallest naturally derived antigen-binding fragments, with affinities in the range of nano- to picomolar concentrations. These innovative new compounds will be developed and evaluated for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. More specifically, the radioprobes will be of great value for imaging (PET, SPECT) and targeted radiotherapy in the field of oncology. Research and experiments will entail analytical techniques, organic synthesis, radiochemistry, in vitro cell work, in vivo imaging in small animals, therapeutic tumor efficacy studies et cetera. The work will be performed in the laboratories of Radiopharmaceutical Research (promoter prof. F. Cleeren) and Ablynx (co-promoter P. Casteels). Detailed layout of the work plan is pending and will be carefully elaborated soon.