04 Jul 22. Guarantors of Brain award

Congratulations to Robert Shaw who received a Guarantors of Brain award to support his attendance at BRAIN & BRAIN PET 2022 conference.

Robert Shaw, PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, received a Guarantors of Brain award to support his attendance at the recent BRAIN & BRAIN PET conference.

The Grantors of Brain travel grants support applicants attendance at scientific meetings where they will present their original work, which relates to their research interests.

At this years BRAIN & BRAIN PET conference, Robert presented a poster entitled, “The first in vivo brain kinetic modelling study with a selective radiotracer targeting sphingosine-1-phosphate-5 (S1P5) receptors”.

Robert explains: This was focused primarily on the modelling and assessment of the first in vivo PET scans using a novel PET ligand [18F] TEFM78. The results showed us that [18F] TEFM78 clears the blood, crosses the blood brain barrier and enters the brain. Higher binding of the radiotracer was visible in white matter dense regions. There was a good metabolic profile for [18F] TEFM78 over the course of the scan. The group want to continue this work and move forward into validating this novel tracer in MS disease models.

We asked Robert his thoughts on receiving this award.

“I am really grateful to have received the Guarantors of Brain award to allow me to travel to the Brain/Brain PET2022 meeting.

It was a great conference and I really enjoyed being able to share my work with others in the field face to face.”

Robert is a PhD student in the Adriana Tavares Research Group in his final few months; his project involves the development of selective radiotracers targeting sphingosine-1-phosphate-5 (S1P5) receptors for PET imaging. S1P5 is said to be expressed almost exclusively on oligodendrocytes in the central nervous system and thus targeting this with a PET ligand could provide a powerful new tool in the fight against demyelinating diseases.

Robert is currently in the analysis and write up phase of the project and is hoping to have a thesis on the project soon.