Speaker: Dr Gilbert Fruhwirth, Department of Imaging Chemistry and Biology, School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King's College London

Host: Dr Elisabeth Ehler

My lab is focused on contributing to the development of new and the improvement of existing therapeutics in oncology and immunology. Therefore, we capitalize on various imaging approaches that span multiple lengths scales ranging from whole-body to microscopic levels and apply them to track the disease and/or the therapy.

One major research area is the direct non-invasive in vivo imaging of new cell-based therapies, including adoptive T-cell immunotherapies and stem cell-derived therapies, with the aim to unleash their full potential through providing a better understanding of the mechanisms governing their in vivo distribution, efficacy, fate and potential adverse side effects. These advanced cell therapies hold great promise for treating cancer and are emerging concepts in other fields, for instance, in transplantation and tissue regeneration (e.g. liver, heart).

Another major research area is to develop and employ in vivo traceable cancer models to gain a better insight into the molecular processes underlying cancer progression and metastasis. These models are also suitable to study the effects of new and experimental treatments on these processes. We have already employed these models to investigate the effects of chemotherapies and immunotherapies on tumour growth and metastasis.

In this talk, I will introduce the basic concepts needed for non-invasive in vivo cancer and cell therapy tracking and present you with a few select research examples from my lab in both arenas.