Application deadline

Registration deadline for PhD students and students at the Medical Student Research Program at Uit - The Arctic University of Norway: September 1st

Application deadline for external applicants: September 15th

Type of course

PhD course. This course is available as a singular course.

The course is organized by the Department of Clinical Medicine and the Norwegian Research School in Medical Imaging (MEDIM).

Admission requirements

To take PhD courses you need at a minimum a master's degree or equivalent, or admission to a Medical Student Research Program.

External applicants apply for admission through SøknadsWeb. Registrations for applications regarding the autumn semester starts February 1st.

For more information regarding PhD courses at the Faculty of Health Sciences go to: http://uit.no/helsefak/forskning/phd/emner

The course has a capacity of 10 students.

If there are more applicants than available spaces in the course, students will be given priority from category 1 to 5.

1. PhD students affiliated with the national network "Norwegian Research School in Medical Imagining" (MedIm)

2. PhD students, research fellows and students participating in the medical student research programme at the UiT - The Arctic University of Tromsø (not affiliated with MedIm)

3. Participants in the Associate Professor Programme

4. PhD students and students at the medical student research programme at other universities (not affiliated with MedIm)

5. People who have minimum a Master's degree or equivalent, but have not been admitted to a PhD programme.

Mandatory prerequisites:
Passed course in Experimental animal science for researchers (Category C).

Documentation of passed course must uploaded in SøknadsWeb. Students who have taken HEL-8014 or HEL-6320 at the University of Tromsø do not have to send in any documentation.

Course content

The course will offer theoretical and practical training in state of the art techniques common in small animal molecular imaging. The teaching will be given as lectures, demonstrations, and practical sessions. The topics discussed will include animal welfare and injection methods, radiation protection, basic radiochemistry and radiopharmacy, multicellular tumour spheroid (MTS), frozen section autoradiography, biodistribution, preclinical PET/SPECT/CT, image analysis and aspects of translational research.

Link to the preclinical PET/SPECT/CT facility at the Faculty of Health Science: http://www.uit.no/research/pet

Objectives of the course

At the end of the course the student will be able to:

• Describe the theoretical foundation of preclinical molecular imaging as a modern research tool.
• Describe and discuss advantages and limitations with modern techniques for in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro preclinical molecular imaging, including multicellular tumour spheroid (MTS), frozen section autoradiography biodistribition and PET/SPECT/CT.
• Have a basic understanding for radiochemistry, radiopharmacy, biodistribution of tracers and the factors affecting the choice of tracer for a specific imaging task.
• Plan, prepare and perform a basic MTS experiment, including preparation of cell cultures to be used for MTS's, preparation of the MTS's, collecting data and analyzing the results.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard in vitro frozen section autoradiography experiment, including preparation and cryosectioning of frozen tissue, incubating it with a radioactive PET or SPECT tracer, exposing and scanning the image plate and analyzing the resulting images.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard ex vivo biodistribution experiment, including sacrificing the animal after PET-tracer administration, dissection and removing the organs of interest, measuring the radioactivity in each organ using wellcounter, analyze, correlate and compare the result with in vivo imaging.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard in vivo PET/SPECT/CT experiment, including intravenous administration of a PET or SPECT tracer, preparing a static or dynamic scan protocol, performing the scan, reconstructing the images, analyzing and extracting useful information from the static or dynamic images, for example specific uptake values (SUV) and time activity curves.

Language of instruction and examination

Teaching methods

Assessment

Work requirements:

• Attendance at the course, including lectures, demonstrations and laboratory exercises.
• Passed reports on all of the laboratory exercises.

Examination and assessment:

Home examination, 10 pages, graded pass or fail. The examination can be answered in any Scandinavian language or English.

Continuation exam:

There will be the option of one supplementary examination if a fail grade is achieved at the first attempt. Application deadline for continuation exam is January 15th.

Recommended reading/syllabus

Books:

• Kiessling, Pichler. Small Animal Imaging. Springer Verlag 2011.
• Cherry, Sorenson, Phelps. Physics in Nuclear Medicine. Elsevier 2012.

Research articles:

• Autoradiography
  • Bergstrom, M. (2003). Autoradiography with Positron Emitting Isotopes in Positron Emission Tomography Tracer Discovery. Molecular Imaging & Biology, 5(6), 390-396. doi:10.1016/j.mibio.2003.09.004
  • Sihver, S., Sihver, W., Bergström, M., Höglund, a U., Sjöberg, P., Lângström, B., & Watanabe, Y. (1999). Quantitative autoradiography with short-lived positron emission tomography tracers: a study on muscarinic acetylcholine receptors with N-[(11)C]methyl-4-piperidylbenzilate. The Journal of pharmacology and experimental therapeutics, 290(2), 917-22. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10411609
• MTS
• Bergstrom, M., Monazzam, A., Razifar, P., Ide, S., Josephsson, R., & Langstrom, B. (2008). Modeling spheroid growth, PET tracer uptake, and treatment effects of the Hsp90 inhibitor NVP-AUY922. Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine, 49(7), 1204-10. doi:10.2967/jnumed.108.050799
• Monazzam, A., Razifar, P., Ide, S., Rugaard Jensen, M., Josephsson, R., Blomqvist, C., ¿ Bergström, M. (2009). Evaluation of the Hsp90 inhibitor NVP-AUY922 in multicellular tumour spheroids with respect to effects on growth and PET tracer uptake. Nuclear medicine and biology, 36(3), 335-42. doi:10.1016/j.nucmedbio.2008.12.009
• Monazzam, A., Razifar, P., Lindhe, O., Josephsson, R., Långström, B., & Bergström, M. (2005). A new, fast and semi-automated size determination method (SASDM) for studying multicellular tumor spheroids. Cancer cell international, 5, 32. doi:10.1186/1475-2867-5-32
• Monazzam, A., Razifar, P., Simonsson, M., Qvarnström, F., Josephsson, R., Blomqvist, C., ¿ Bergström, M. (2006). Multicellular tumour spheroid as a model for evaluation of [18F]FDG as biomarker for breast cancer treatment monitoring. Cancer cell international, 6, 6. doi:10.1186/1475-2867-6-6