Bender Group – PET tracer development and preclinical PET imaging

The group consists of 7 chemists and 6 bioanalysts and is part of Aarhus University Hospitals department for nuclear medicine and PET-center. On a yearly base more than 12.000 PET doses are produced and distributed both for clinical and research use.

Research focus

Research foci are the development of new imaging probes targeting different pathophysiologic conditions and basic radiochemical development work. Ideally new imaging probes are developed from bench to bed. The developed imaging probes are preferentially radiolabelled with the short lived positron emitters carbon-11 (t½= 20.3 min) of fluorine-18 (t½=109.8 min).

Traditionally the group focus is neurological disorders, dementias and liver diseases. New targets such as diabetes and advanced tracers for oncological imaging are of increasing importance. Together with these new targets the development repertoire is extended from small molecule (MW < 500 g/mol) to larger peptides and proteins. These new developments are preclinical evaluated in rodents employing the department’s µPET/MR scanner and larger animals such as pig-models. On average 2 – 3 new imaging probes are validated for use in humans and 5 – 10 radiolabelled compounds are pre-clinically evaluated.

The basic radiochemical development is focused on the development of new or further development of existing labelling techniques. Of special interest are carbon-11 carbonylation techniques avoiding high pressure systems.

Available projects

The Bender group currently has projects available for Master and PhD students. Please contact Group Leader Dirk Bender directly, if interested.