Targeting Tumor-Associated Proteins with Radiometal-Based PET Probes

The Department of Medical Imaging is pleased to have Bernadette Marquez-Nostra, PhD, presenting at our Grand Rounds on Wednesday, March 30th, in COM, Room 2117, at 12:00 pm. Dr. Marquez-Nostra is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine.

Bernadette Marquez-Nostra received her B.S. degree in Biochemistry at California State University Fullerton, where she began her research experience in organic chemistry.  She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of California, Davis under the mentorship of Professor Claude Meares, where she developed covalent-binding probes as an approach to improve ligand binding affinities for biomedical applications. This experience led her to pursue her postdoctoral training in the department of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO.  Under the mentorship of Associate Professor Suzanne Lapi, she currently develops novel peptide and antibody-based radiopharmaceuticals for PET imaging of cancer in tumor-bearing mice and in a clinical trial. Her research interest is to develop PET probes as companion diagnostic agents to aid in treatment planning for triple negative breast cancer and other diseases.