Wellington Pham, Ph.D.

Wellington Pham, Ph.D.

Professor, Radiology and Radiological Sciences
Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Areas of Interest: Cancer Biology; Synthetic & Medicinal Chemistry; Imaging

The main work in this lab focuses on integrating medicinal chemistry with molecular imaging to validate biomarkers along the amyloid-cascade mechanism for imaging Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We develop novel PET probes, including [11C]promethazine, [11C]ergothioneine, and [18F]PB0822, for imaging amyloid plaques, oxidative stress, and pyroglutamate-3 amyloid, respectively. Aside from synthetic chemistry for developing the precursors and labeling methods, we also design biological assays to assess the specificity and efficacy of these probes. But the most exciting part of this multidisciplinary laboratory is translating our work into testing on preclinical animal models of AD. Currently, working in collaboration with colleagues from the Department of Pharmacology, we also develop a specific nanobody-based probe to detect AD several years before amyloid plaque formation.