At this year’s Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s Annual General Meeting, the Peter Mac PET Centre received the annual team awards for both excellence and innovation.   The excellence award recognised clinical and research efforts over many years, and the strong, collaborative partnerships that the PET Centre has built within and beyond Peter Mac.  The innovation award related to the team’s involvement in the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in melanoma.  The collaboration with ANSTO and Cyclotek on the work with MEL050 was highlighted as one of the key aspects of this program.

“The collaborations on CRCBID-related projects have been a significant part of this success,” says Rod Hicks, CRCBID’s Radiopharmaceutical Stream Leader and Director of Peter Mac’s Centre for Cancer Imaging.  “The mutual contributions from all participants have seen good science being translated to improved clinical practice.”

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CRCBID researcher, Dr Delphine Denoyer, from Peter Mac’s Translational Research Lab was recently recognised at the Clinical Oncology Society of Australia (COSA) conference in Melbourne.  Delphine’s poster, 'Pre clinical PET imaging study with [18F]MEL050, a new selective fluorinated agent for melanoma’ won the award for the Most Novel Research Presented by Poster.  This year’s meeting was attended by 1900 delegates with over 300 posters presented.

“It’s rewarding to see recognition for the outstanding work of Peter Mac researchers in many fora,” says, Professor Hicks, “but it is particularly notable when our laboratory research receives recognition at clinical meetings.”

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Congratulations also to Lucy Vivash, a CRCBID PhD student working with Professor Terry O’Brien at the University of Melbourne. The collaboration with Professor Terry O’Brien’s team at the University of Melbourne has contributed significantly to CRCBID's success over the years, with many papers in prestigious neurology journals relating to that work.

Lucy’s poster presentation on her research into the characterisation of a central benzodiazepine receptor ligand suitable for PET imaging was recognised at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) meeting in Vienna in October. The Eckert & Ziegler award is designed to encourage young and talented nuclear medicine investigators to attend the EANM.  Winners were selected by a jury from the EANM, from 534 entries.

Lucy Vivash, second from right, with other award recipients at EANM in Vienna

Published December 2010