Medical Radionuclide Production and Radiochemistry at UW-Madison's Department of Medical Physics

The University of Wisconsin Department of Medical Physics is a basic science research department with faculty focusing on applications of physics in medicine, including magnetic resonance imaging, x-ray imaging, optical imaging, ultrasound imaging, radiation therapy, and nuclear medicine. Graduate studies in the department provide excellent training for a research career in academia or industry or to pursue a clinical medical physicist residency. With the use of two cyclotrons and a tandem linear accelerator, a wide variety of radionuclides are accessible by irradiating solid, liquid or gas targets. The radioelement of interest is isolated from the bulk target material through radiochemical separations and functionalized using organic radiochemistry or bioconjugation chemistry to any of a number of biological targeting vectors, such as hormones, peptides, or antibodies. The radioactively tagged biological molecules are used to perform preclinical and clinical medical research. Three specific examples of this radionuclide production-radiochemistry- medical research framework will be elaborated upon for radiotracers used as part of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and oncology research.