Professor John Hooper

Project Summary

Professor Hooper and his team will use this grant to develop new precision-medicine agents, called theranostics, for detection and treatment of the most common form of pancreatic cancer, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).  These agents can accurately detect tumours using PET-CT imaging. They provide a powerful and selective way to deliver anti-cancer drugs to PDAC tumours, and would, therefore, improve the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs whilst reducing their side-effects.  Professor Hooper’s team has already successfully developed a lead theranostic agent that is very effective at detecting and treating pancreatic cancer in relevant pre-clinical models in the laboratory. The team will now bioengineer the lead theranostic so that it can be administered to patients for clinical testing, and then manufactured in quantities that are clinically useful and economically viable for production and marketing. Bioengineering will also allow the lead agent to be readily linked with a range of molecular imaging and anti-cancer drugs that are designed to best suit each PDAC patient.