Sofia Otaru

I am currently pursuing my Ph.D. degree at the Doctoral Programme for Chemistry and Molecular Sciences (CHEMS-DP) in The TRacers for Molecular Imaging Team (TRIM Team). The project I am working on is an Academy of Finland Key project (Prof. Airaksinen) on KIT-ra­diola­bel­ing of bio­mo­lecules with flu­or­ine-18 under the supervision of Prof. Airaksinen and Dr. Sarparanta. My research interests are on targeted biopharmaceutics, personalized medicines and studying cancer and its differentiation from benign conditions. Thus, the main focus of my PhD is on developing efficient radiolabeling methods for functionalized biopharmaceuticals. The aim in my project is on the utilization of the radiolabeled analogues of these selected biomolecules to target and evaluate the biomolecular tracers in a variety of cancers in murine xenograft and allograft tumor models. In my research I use biological evaluations and positron emission tomography (PET) with fluorine-18 radiolabeled biomolecules for the detection of cancers in a molecular and cellular level.