Events

The Pivotal Role of EPR Oximetry to Assess the Effect of Pharmacological Manipulation of Tissue Oxygenation

Moderated by: Dr. Benoit Driesschaert, West Virginia University

​About the Speaker: Bernard Gallez is pharmacist, radiopharmacist and industry pharmacist. He got his PhD in 1993 at UCLouvain in the field of targeted MRI contrast agents. Then, he realized a post-doc in Dartmouth Medical School (HM Swartz’s laboratory) where he discovered “In vivo EPR”. Back in Belgium, he climbed the steps of an academic career (assistant professor, professor and finally full professor since 2010) at UCLouvain. In his university, he founded in 1999 the “Laboratory of Biomedical Magnetic Resonance” by putting together instruments and expertise in EPR (in vitro and in vivo), NMR spectroscopy and MRI. Among others, he is teaching biophysics applied to pharmaceutical sciences, inorganic pharmaceutical chemistry, radiochemistry, radiotoxicology and radiopharmacy, imaging methods to assess the effect of drugs, diagnostic and therapy of cancer. He has directed 27 PhD theses and is author of more than 280 peer-reviewed publications in international journals. His research activities are built on two pillars: 1) the development of cutting-edge magnetic resonance tools to characterize the tumor microenvironment (oxygenation, perfusion, angiogenesis, metabolism); 2) the application of these tools to develop innovative therapeutic interventions, mainly in the field of cancer. The laboratory of Bernard Gallez is also housing one of the few clinical EPR spectrometers existing in the world where he is leading a clinical study in progress on the non-invasive characterization by EPR of melanoma (more than 150 subjects enrolled so far).

About the Webinar: Hypoxia has been long recognized as a crucial factor in many disorders and in treatment response or failure, a statement that justified considerable efforts to develop non-invasive oximetry techniques. EPR oximetry with stable particulate oxygen sensors has emerged as a unique technology to assess longitudinally the evolution of tissue oxygenation from the same site. EPR oximetry has been applied in a broad range of tissues under different physiological or pathological conditions. But, one of the main contributions of EPR oximetry has been in the field of pharmacology where the unique capability to follow in real time the effects of drugs targeting tissue hypoxia has been exploited to validate treatments and propose rational dosing regimen. Illustrative examples will be presented in the field of oncology with discussion about the main challenges and possible responses for personalized hypoxia-targeted therapies.