On October 27, 2007, TRIUMF hosted a Workshop on Radiotracer Development to establish the groundwork for a national collaborative on radiotracer research and development.
Researchers from the major imaging centres across Canada came together to form collaborative links to foster the rapid development of biological tracers tagged with radionuclides for imaging. While the research groups have vastly different individual goals, they all require the same tools for producing the radionuclides and attaching them to these specific probes.
Each of the centres is too small to be able to advance their radiotracer research on their own, thus the goal is to form networks of collaboration to share expertise, both in personnel and equipment, to further the development of this major effort for biological research using imaging.
The focus of the imaging research spans all aspects of neuroscience, cardiology and cancer biology. Even though these diseases have different expressions in patients, the radiotracers used to probe these conditions require similar approaches. Tracers for both positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) tracers were explored.
Training of the personnel moving into this rapidly growing field is a major concern and requires new skills at all levels: from technicians to postdoctoral fellows to scientists adapting to the imaging field.
One of the outcomes of the Workshop was to move forward on developing further collaborations and to create the framework for submitting a National CFI proposal for the collective support of the centres.