PhD defence É. (Érika) Murce Silva

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

Prostate cancer is the second most abundant cancer in men, causing approximately 400,000 deaths annually worldwide. Despite several treatment options being available, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, patients with progressing, advanced forms of the disease have poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Radionuclide therapy has rapidly developed in the last decade, cementing its position as a therapeutic option for this patient group. However, there is still much research needed on the optimization of the radiopharmaceutical agents, their therapeutic efficacy and long-term effects in earlier stages of the disease. One main point of concern is their toxicity to healthy organs. Another issue is the demand of diagnostic companions to the therapeutic agents, which allows for personalized medicine and accurate dosimetry. Finally, to address their limited therapeutic efficacy in certain patient groups, combination therapies are being investigated. In this thesis, we aimed to develop new agents with improved pharmacokinetics for imaging and ultimately therapy of prostate cancer. We focused on such theranostic (therapy + diagnostic) agents, performing chemical modifications on the compound’s linker moiety, radionuclide chelator and number of binding units (valency). We have also attached cytotoxic agents to our compounds for targeted drug delivery and a combined therapeutic application. We hope that our findings will contribute to understanding the effects of chemical modifications and inspire future research towards new drugs for clinical imaging and therapy of prostate cancer.