Researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC are developing a new “plug-and-play” platform that could greatly simplify and speed up the creation of new radiotracers, compounds used in positron emission tomography (PET) scans to visualize diseases such as cancer inside the body and track their progression. The project, supported by a four-year, $2.6 million grant from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, part of the National Institutes of Health, aims to expand the uses of PET imaging, potentially improving patient care while making the technology more affordable and accessible. Scientists can identify promising new biological markers faster than ever, but turning those discoveries into PET tracers remains a challenge. Attaching a radioactive substance to these molecules is a time-consuming and technically demanding process that requires specialized equipment and facilities. To address this bottleneck, the research team is creating a platform that can be used to make a wide range of radiotracers. The platform combines a universal radioactive building block—which can be attached to different biological molecules—with a compact device, about the size of a coffee cup, that rapidly combines the two components to produce new radiotracers. The platform brings together two advanced chemistry approaches: click chemistry and droplet radiochemistry. Click chemistry, a Nobel Prize-winning technique, allows scientists to quickly join molecules together, like buckling a seatbelt. Droplet radiochemistry carries out chemical reactions in extremely small droplets, using tiny amounts of material. Preliminary research suggests the approach can produce new radiotracers that could help detect and study several different types of cancer. One tracer is designed to target fibroblast activation protein, which is found at high levels in many tumors. The team is also testing tracers designed specifically to detect liver and prostate cancer.

Researchers have engineered a new material that is an extreme thermal insulator, is exceptionally stiff, and can be printed as a thin film at large scales. The material has one of the lowest thermal conductivity profiles of any dense, or non-porous, material – approaching the theoretical limit of how good a material can be as a thermal insulator.