The Ribeiro Pereira Lab has four major goals:

1. Use biomolecules, ranging from small molecules to full-length antibodies, as tumor-targeting agents to deliver imaging or cytotoxic cargo. A primary research focus of our laboratory is the conjugation, labeling, and validation of tumor-targeting molecular imaging and therapeutic agents.
2. Use multimodal imaging to monitor the binding of molecular-targeted compounds to tumors before and during therapy. To visualize a particular biological process, we take advantage of the high sensitives of PET, SPECT, or optical imaging. We use non-invasive molecular imaging to determine the role of receptor membrane dynamics and tumor stroma in cancer therapy.
3. Use acute and temporal pharmacologic approaches to modulate tumor biology in ways that enhance antibody- and non-antibody-based cancer therapies. We use pharmacologic approaches with appropriate PK/PD as potential adjuvants for specific antibody-targeted and non-antibody-based cancer therapies.
4. Improve cancer diagnosis and treatment by combining basic tumor biology with preclinical knowledge and clinical needs. We use fresh cultures of tumors and patient-derived GC xenografts (PDXs) to correlate antibody targeting with the respective tumor’s genetic profile and identify genetic features that characterize a non-responder versus a responder tumor. The preclinical discoveries made in our laboratory are combined with retrospective and prospective studies, prioritized and pushed towards clinical translation.