Prof. Rachela Popovtzer is the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan University, and a member of the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA). She has previously served as head of the Bioengineering Track at Bar Ilan University, and was a visiting Professor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY.
Prof. Popovtzer is a winner of numerous international biomedical grants and awards. She has recently been awarded the prestegious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant, to lead research on a novel nanoplatform for delivery of CRISPR to the brain, to treat rare genetic diseases. She has also been awarded 8 million Euro from the European Union's Horizon 2020 program, to scientifically lead a European consortium focused on developing multimodal nanoparticles for non-invasive tracking of therapeutic stem cells for muscle regeneration. Prof. Popovtzer has won additional grants from the NIH, Germany-Israel Foundation (GIF), Israel Science Foundation, Israel Innovation Authority, and the Ministry of Science and Technology.
**Trimodal Nanoparticle Contrast Agent for CT, MRI and SPECT Imaging: Synthesis and Characterization of Radiolabeled Core/Shell Iron Oxide@Gold Nanoparticles**
Nanoparticles have emerged as promising contrast agents for various imaging applications. In our recent paper, we demonstrated synthesis and characterization of a novel hybrid nano-structure, consisting of an iron oxide@gold nanoparticle, labeled with technetium-99m, for trimodal SPECT/CT/MRI imaging. The particles showed efficient capabilities as a CT/MRI imaging agent, and high radiochemical yield, indicating a potential single hybrid material for multimodal SPECT/CT/MRI.
This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, and was published in Chemistry Letters, doi.org/10.1246/cl.180780.
**Please visit our Horizon 2020 project here: https://www.n-track.eu/ ***
Extremely proud of my PhD students Adi Anaki and Chen Tzror-Azankot, and my postdocs Shir Hochwald Liber and Yossi Mizrachi, for the excellent talks they gave at the Annual BINA BIU conference!
Adi on novel bispecific nanoparticles, Shir and Yossi on their innovative synthetic biology-based biochip, and Chen for her prize winning talk on sweet nanoparticles for targeted radiation therapy. Fantastic job!
Congratulations to our PhD student, Chen Tzror Azankot, for successfully completing Teva's National Forum for BioInnovators program for exceptional PhD students in the field of translational biomedicine!
And good luck next year in your role as Mentor in the Forum!
Thanks for your interest!
We always have room for excellent, passionate and motivated students!
Outstanding graduate students with background in Chemistry and/or Engineering and/or Biology are welcome to send an email to rachela.popovtzer@gmail.com
