UVACCC Welcomes Shivashankar Khanapur, PhD, M.Pharm

UVACCC welcomes Shivashankar Khanapur, PhD, M.Pharm, Assistant Professor of Radiology and Medical Imaging, to the Cancer Therapeutics Research Program. UVA’s Radiochemistry Core, led by Dr. Khanapur, is accelerating cancer research by expanding access to advanced PET radiotracers and rigorous production workflows. Building on a key role in a $16 million Pan-Singapore collaborative grant, the team developed an Immuno-Oncology Imaging Toolbox to advance precision immune imaging for cancer immunotherapy studies.

This work includes no-carrier-added aqueous radiochemistry strategies and new radiolabeled probes (e.g., [68Ga]Ga-mNOTA-GZP and [18F]AlF-mNOTA-GZP derivatives) that are supporting a Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Era of Hope Scholar Award. Dr. Khanapur also explores the synthesis of new radiopharmaceuticals and the relationship between adrenal tumors and hypertension.

Dr. Khanapur earned his B. Pharm and M. Pharm from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bengaluru, India. He earned his PhD in Radiological Sciences from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

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