Professional Background:

Amit started his academic journey with a BSc in chemical biology and an MSc in organic chemistry from Bar Ilan University, Israel. He began his radiochemistry research and clinical production at Hadassah Hospital (Israel), mostly around radioflurinations and developing Click Chemistry for peptide-based radiotracers. Upon moving to the US, Amit supported research and clinical production at Stanford Medical School and held industry positions as an analytical chemist in big pharma companies (Gilead Sciences, Genentech). Moving to Australia allowed Amit to combine his analytical and radiochemistry knowledge as a radioanalytical chemist at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and later on to push the envelope even more as a PhD student (PeterMac, Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Science) and complete a theranostic development for Y₁R targeting peptide, from chemical synthesis to pre-clinical-PET-CT-imaging in mice.

Research Interests:

Amit is primarily interested in using traditional pharmaceutical development tools to promote radiopharmaceutical development. For example, metabolic stability analysis of non-radioactive standards can hint at the biodistribution trend of a given theranostic agent, allowing a more thoughtful design to secure a selective hit of an in vivo target. Another evolving field is the medical usage of Alpha-emitting metal radioisotopes. While these high-energy radioisotopes can deliver lethal radiation doses to terminate cancer tumours, their radioactive decay is complex and challenging. The current coordinative chemistry to capture radioisotopes is insufficient for these Alpha emitters. Amit is interested in developing new chelating agents and chelation methods to solve this problem.