Evans Lab
Principal Investigator: Michael John Evans
Institution: University of California, San Francisco (San Francisco, CA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
The recent FDA approvals (Lutathera, Azedra, Pluvicto) and the swell of promising experimental agents in clinical trials underscore the surging enthusiasm to investigate molecularly targeted radiotherapy (TRT) as a treatment modality for many cancers. However, the clinical experience shows that tumor responses to TRTs are often transient and/or variable among patients. Thus, there is an urgent unmet need to develop new strategies to maximize the therapeutic benefit of TRT for cancer patients. We have approached this challenge by developing a new class of radiopharmaceuticals termed “restricted interaction peptides” (RIPs) which are low molecular weight (MW) peptides that are internally cleaved by a tumor endoprotease to unmask a radiolabeled membrane binding peptide. After RIP proteolysis, the membrane binding peptide adopts a helical conformation and immediately attaches to a nearby plasma membranes in the tumor. Using PET, we have found that RIPs may have several properties advantageous for TRT. we hypothesize that RIPs may be a mutually safe and effective platform for TRT. During this project, we will test this hypothesis over three Specific Aims. During Aim 1, we will perform a…
Active NIH Awards
- 1R01CA308884-01: A novel chemical strategy to harness the tumor specific biochemistry of human kallikrein 2 for prostate cancer theranostics (2026)
- 1R01CA309883-01: Bioengineering of covalent proteins for nuclear medicine applications (2026)
- 5R01CA279328-03: Maximizing tumor responses to targeted radiotherapy with a conditionally activated membrane binding probe (2026)
- 5R01CA279328-02: Maximizing tumor responses to targeted radiotherapy with a conditionally activated membrane binding probe (2025)
- 5R01CA258297-05: Precision targeting of T cell cytotoxicity with PET (2025)
Explore 700+ US Biology Labs on FindBioLabs.com