RESEARCH INTERESTS

· Coordination chemistry of Technetium, Rhenium and other radiometals.

· Design, synthesis and characterization of tailor-made bifunctional ligands and coupling to biomolecules of interest (peptides and small organic molecules).

· Synthesis and characterization of Technetium and Rhenium complexes at macroscopic level.

· Radiolabelling of the novel compounds with ^99mTc, ^186/188Re or other radionuclides.

· Characterization of the radiolabelled compounds by analytical methods, mainly by comparative radio-HPLC studies.

· Stability studies, in vitro and in vivo biological evaluation.

Current Projects: Technetium/Rhenium mixed ligand complexes, ^99mTc labeled mannosylated dextrans for sentinel lymph node imaging, ^99mTc labeled antibiotics for infection imaging, ^99mTc labeled quinazolines for imaging tumors overexpressing EGFR receptors, and ^99mTc labeled fatty acids for heart metabolism studies.

CURRENT RESEARCH FUNDING PROGRAMMES

 ARISTEIA II, DETEGAR, “Development of multimodal imaging agents for Sentinel Node Detection and Cancer Diagnosis”

 FP7-ERA.Net RUS Linking Russia to the ERA "Development of novel natural product-based imaging probes for early diagnosis and therapeutic application in multi-drug resistant tumors"

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Dr Papadopoulos and Dr Pirmettis are responsible for teaching “Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry” at undergraduate level and also, for teaching “Advanced Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry I and II” and “Radiopharmacology” at postgraduate level, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Athens University (2006 - present)