Enabling enhanced preclinical nuclear imaging at the University of Hull

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The grant application is to upgrade the preclinical scanning facilities for nuclear imaging of small animals (mice and rats) at the University of Hull. These facilities are used for research into disease and human health. The main areas that will be tackled are the diagnosis and staging of disease (particularly cancer) along with the personalised selection of treatment (e.g. whether radiotherapy or chemotherapy is the best treatment, and even which drug will be the most likely to successfully treat the patient). Preclinical scanning allows the use of the animal models in the most effective and essential way to validate radiopharmaceutical drugs before they can be taken into clinical trials in humans. The quality of the data also means that fewer animals are required to understand the drug and demonstrate whether it is suitable for clinical trials in humans.Radiopharmaceuticals use a miniscule amount of a radioactive substance, generally produced on a small particle accelerator, to allow us to locate disease, track biological processes and select treatment in patients. They provide the most sensitive method and only effective way for tracking molecular level processes non-invasively in the human body.We have invented new radiopharmaceutical drug candidates at the University of Hull and are also working with both UK based and international pharmaceutical companies to provide data to allow their drugs to progress through to clinical testing and ultimately approved for routine human use (i.e. in the NHS). We support clinicians in developing and testing new drug treatments to determine effective doses and treatment regimes for them to use in patients. The high quality information obtained from the preclinical imaging studies means that these compounds can rapidly and efficiently be tested and validated.This forms part of a translational pathway in Hull with preclinical research linking through to NHS patient scanning. We can carry out research patient scans and will use the preclinical scanners to gather the data to take new radiopharmaceuticals through to the clinic using our new human production facility on the hospital site (the Molecular Imaging Research Centre at Castle Hill Hospital, Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust)..