Naming Opportunity for the Radiochemistry Laboratory
$ 250,000

The Radiochemistry Laboratory is key to innovative research with PET.  The brain is replete with a plethora of molecules and only a small number of these have been imaged in the living brain.  The key to advancing the development of these methods to probe the molecular bases of brain function is radiochemistry.  It is here where new tracer methods are developed to image molecules and receptors that have never before been imaged.  Radiochemistry development will also be central to using PET to image gene expression.  This is going to be an area of tremendous growth and development in PET research.  While an individual’s genotype can be assayed from peripheral blood, we know that more than 75% of our genes are expressed in the brain and that it is gene expression which determines function.  New PET methods will eventually be developed to image the non-invasive probing of gene expression. 

A $250,000 gift to the Brain Imaging Laboratory Endowment will provide vital funding for our scientists who are innovators in the development of new radiochemistry methods.  Of crucial importance here is support for a radiochemist.  Support is also required to maintain a state-of-art facility and to continuously upgrade instrumentation as it becomes available.