Area of Research
Raymond Reilly’s research focuses on developing novel radiopharmaceutical agents to detect and treat cancer. His work involves discovery, preclinical development and clinical translation of these agents for molecular imaging or molecularly targeted radiotherapy of cancer.
Research Challenge
Cancer is often challenging to treat, in part because each tumour is different. Tumours can vary in the genes that they express, the proteins that are displayed, and how they respond to treatments. To study a tumour’s molecular properties, oncologists are investigating an approach called molecular imaging, which can probe these tumour properties.
One approach to molecular imaging of cancer, used in nuclear medicine, involves a probe molecule tagged with a radioactive isotope that can be detected by imaging using either single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) or positron emission tomography (PET). To specifically image the properties of cancer cells, scientists can attach the radioactive isotope to a targeting agent that is capable of binding to the proteins displayed by the cancer cells. These compounds are called radiopharmaceuticals and can be used to detect and characterize the properties of tumours with very high sensitivity and specificity.