The Ribeiro Pereira Lab has four major goals:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.