05.12.2024

Justina, Barbara, Tommy, Robin, and Tom participated at the 13^th Austrian Peptide Symposium (AtPS) in Vienna. As in previous years, a very interesting programm was offered including talks of national and international speakers as well as a poster session and industry exhibition. Always a pleasure to attend!

29.11.2024

Today, Katharina Huemer defended successfully her MSc thesis with Franz Jirsa as chair of the defense committee and Margit Cichna-Markl and Tom as examiner. Hearty gratulations Kati for a well done job 😊. Thank you for brining your project a big step forwards and we all wish you best luck and success for the future!

27.11.2024

Tonight, the AG Mindt visited the Christmas market at the campus of the old AKH (Allgemeines Krankenhaus Wien). It is one of the total >14 Christmas markets in Vienna taking place every year from the middle of November until Christmas. We withstood the winterly temperature with hot beverages and food. A nice and very pre-xmassy evening 😊.

08.11.2024

The 1^st Symposium of the Joint Applied Medicinal Radiochemistry Facility (https://medradchem.univie.ac.at/) took place at the UniVie today. The goal was to bring together Viennese scientists in the field of radiopharmaceutical/chemical sciences to increase the awareness of available expertise and equipment in order to foster future collaborations. With almost 40 participants and presentations of group leaders of the UniVie (Prof. T. Mindt, Prof. V. Pichler), the MedUni Wien (Prof. C. Philippe, Prof. O. Langer, Prof. C. Kuntner, Dr. T. Wanek) and the TU Wien (Dr. V. Rosecker), the event was a great success! The programm was diverse in topics and on a very high scientific level. It was a great opportunity for a scientific exchange among Viennese researchers in the field. The new symposium will continue annually, alternatingly at the UniVie and the MedUni Wien. I am already looking forward to the next symposium at the MedUni Wien in 2025 😊. Special thanks goes to the members of the Mindt group for a great job in helping organizing the symposium!

01.11.2024

Today starts Sebastian Parcer for his MSc project. He will work with Niko on novel photodynamic therapy approaches. Also, Noah Ibrahim starts his BSc project with Robin to work on novel applications of pre-targeting approaches. Hearty welcome Sebastian and Naoh to the AG Mindt and good luck and success for your research.

01.10.2024

Today is the first day of PhD student Thomas Scheiblauer. Thomas did his MSc at the University of Vienna in the group of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Verena Pichler and will continue the work on hot ruthenium chemistry as part of an industry collaboration. Hearty welcome Thomas to the AG Mindt and a good start with your reseach project(s)!

26.09.2024

At the occasion of Prof. Dr. Bernhard Keppler´s retirement ceremony, my colleague and friend Gilles Gasser from Chimie ParisTech, Paris, France, visited us. During the day, we had scientific meetings and then joined the ceremony in the main building of the University of Vienna together with many colleagues from the University of Vienna and other Universities worldwide, politicians etc. It was a quite an event!

13.09.2024

Xabier Guarrochena´s newest publication entitled “Combination of the amide-to-triazole substitution strategy with alternative structural modifications for the metabolic stabilization of tumor-targeting, radiolabeled peptides” just came out in the Journal of Peptide Science (https://doi.org/10.1002/psc.3654). In this work, the previously developed amide-to-triazole switch methodology is combined for the first time with other peptide stabilization strategies in an effort to encrease the metabolic stability of a novel Somatostatin-14 derivative. Congratulations to all authors!

31.07.2024

For today´s last day of Magda in the AG Mindt we went for a nice Italian dinner. Magda worked for almost 2,5-years in the framework of a successful industry collaboration and got the unique opportunity to work at all major Viennese Universities: the UniWien, MedUni Wien and TU Wien. Thank you Magda for your hard work, endurance, and your important contributions to several research projects! Be sure that patents and publications will follow. I am indeed happy that we will stay in touch through continuous collaborations with the very same industry partner 😊. We wish you good luck for the future!

23.-28.06.2024

A delegation of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry attended this year´s Gordon Research Conference on Metals in Medicine in Andover, New Hampshire, USA. From left to right: PhD students Paul Getreuer represented the AG Kandioller, Anja Federa the AG Kowol, Max Anderla the AG Mindt, and Alex Rosner again the AG Kandioller. Other colleagues of the UniVie and the MedUni Wien were also present, therefore increasing the percentage of attending Austrian scientists at the international conference to an unprecendented high level :). Very interesting conference with a quite tight and busy schedule.

17.05.2024

For this year´s AG Mindt group event we tried our luck with archery in Essling, 22^nd district of Vienna. After some instructions (so nobody gets hurt) we managed to hit the bull´s eye of the target, plastic animals and balloons. A thunderstorm in the middle of the afternoon could not stop us 😉. The restaurant “zum Hopfbär” with its a large selection of Cordon Blue ensured that the group of newly appointed Robin Hoods did not finish the day left hungry. Overall a fun event!

16.05.2024

Check out the new website of the Joint Applied Medicinal Radiochemistry Facility (MedRadChem) which is a intererdisplinicary collaboration between the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna in the field of developing innovative radiopharmaceuticals (medradchem.univie.ac.at/).

16.05.2024

Thanks to Patrick Yassemipour of the Kowol group, the AG Mindt has now a QR code 😊.

06.05.2024

Tom gave an invited talk during a research seminar at the PET centre of Turku University, Finland. He was also given a tour through the impressive national facilities that handles most PET scans in the country. Future collaborations were discussed with Finish colleagues Profs Xiang-Guo Li and Anu Airaksinen, both good old friends in the field for many years. Exciting prospectives :)!

18.04. – 21.04.2024

The European Symposium on Radiopharmacy and Radiochemistry (ESRR) took place this year in beautiful Coimbra, Portugal. Tom, who is deputy president of the board and member of the scientific committee of the ESRR, gave a presentation on “Synthesis and Preclinical Evaluation of BOLD-100 Radiolabeled with Ruthenium-97/103”. With more than 300 attendees from allover the world, we had a new record. The congress has been steadily growing during the past years, which is quite a success story.

15.04.2024

Today, Dr. Sandra Koziel from the University of Wroclaw, Poland, will start her 3-month tenure in the AG Mindt as a visiting scientist. Hearty welcome to Sandra and good luck with your research project!

27.3.2024

Today, Philipp Salomon defended successfully his MSc thesis on the topic … top secret because of industry collaborations 🙂. Hearty congratulations and thank you Philipp for your important contributions that brought the project a big step forward. We wish you all the best for your future!

13.3.-15.03.2024

This year´s retreat of the doctorate school of chemistry of the faculty of chemistry (DoSChem) of the University of Vienna (panel C) took place at the marvelous Szidonia Castle in Hungria near the border to Austria. Excellent presentations of external speakers as well as of PhD candidates. This event gives PhD students as well as PI´s the opportunity for exchanges. The photo below shows only participants of the Inorganic Chemistry “gang”. All made possible by the DoSChem – thank you!

14.3.2024

Read up on the latest news about triazolo-peptidomimetics in Xabier Guarrochena´s just published article “Amide-to-triazole switch in somatostatin-14-based radioligands: Impact on receptor affinity and in vivo stability” in Pharmaceutics (https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics16030392). The amide-to-triazole switch methodology was applied for the first time to a cyclic peptide, the somatostatin analogue AT2S, leading to the identification of a novel pansomatostatin ligand [¹¹¹In]In-XG1 with improved properties. This work was realized in a collaboration with Greek colleagues at Demokritos, Athens. Congratulations to all authors!

12.3.2024

As a sequel of publications using radioisotopes of ruthenium in radiopharmaceutical/chemical research, Barbara Happl´s second paper on “Synthesis and preclinical evaluation of BOLD-100 radiolabeled with ruthenium-97 and ruthenium-103” just came out in Dalton Transactions (DOI: 10.1039/d4dt00118d). Optimizing the applied dose of radiolabeled BOLD-100 paves the way to imaging studies with [⁹⁷Ru]BOLD-100. This was an international, multi-center study together with colleagues of the Medical University Vienna, TU Wien, the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL, Grenoble, FR), GIP Arronax (Nantes, FR) and the Nantes Université (FR). Congratulations to all authors!

01.03.2024

Justina Reis starts her PhD studies in the AG Mindt on the topic of triazolo-peptidomimetics for cancer diagnosis and therapy. She is supported by the Doctorate School of Chemistry (DoSChem) and her project is a collaboration with Prof. Markus Muttenthaler of the Institute of Biological Chemistry, University of Vienna. Hearty welcome Justina and good luck for your research project!

22.2.2024

Today, we celebrated the farewell of Dr. Marie R. Brandt at the (infamous) Milano Restaurant near the Chemistry Department, who decided to leave the UniVie for new opportunities. Marie, I am / we are very thankful for all of your great work and support over the years and we wish you all the very best for future endeavours! I am looking forward to stay in touch and you are always a very welcomed guest at the AG Mindt.

13.2.2024

Tom gave an invited talk at the prestiguous Gordon Reasearch Conference on the Chemistry and Biology of Peptides in Ventura Beach, California, USA. His talk was well received and discussions for new collaborations with American colleagues were initiated. A really nice and interesting conference! To be continued…

29.01.2024

Today, Marysia Weidert defended successfully her BSc thesis on the use of radioactive ruthenium isotopes and their appliation in nuclear medicne. Hearty congratulations to Marysia and good luck for your future studies at the Unversity of Vienna!

19.01.2024

Niko and Tom travelled to Paris for a meeting with collaboration partners of the Gasser group at Chemie ParisTech. It was a fruitful in person meeting with vivid exchange of ideas on the project jointly funded by the French ANR and Austrian FWF. At the same occasion, Tom delivered an invited lecture on “Radioactive Labeled Molecules for the Diagnosis and Therapy of Cancer” and Niko worked out experimental details with Ruonan on Photo Dynamic Therapy (PDT) in vitro experiments (see also 26.08.23).

18.12.2023

Our newest publication on the improved synthesis of the ⁸⁹Zr-chelator DFO* just got accepted in ChemMedChem (https://doi.org/10.1002/cmdc.202300495). Changing the protective group strategy led to a significant improvement, which will make DFO* more readily available to the community interested in ⁸⁹Zr-PET imaging, e.g., immunoPET applications. Congratulations to all authors!

6.12.2023

Today, Marlene Gryllmaier defended successfully her MSc thesis on the topic … top secret because of industry collaborations 🙂. Hearty congratulations Marlene and thank you for your excellent work that brought us an important step forward in the project. All the very best for the future!

21.11.2023

Marie Brandt´s publication on “Quality Assurance Investigations and Impurity Characterization During Upscaling of [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-PSMA^I&T” just came out in Molecules (https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28237696). Read up on the challenges that can come with the establishment of the routine production of radiopharmaceuticals in the clinic. This was a collaboration with colleagues of the Medical University of Vienna. Congratulations to all authors!

15.11.2023

Barbara Happl´s first paper just came out in Pharmaceutics (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics15112626). Read up on the first report on a radiolabelled analogue of the anticancer drug BOLD-100, which is currently in clinical trials. The publication opens a series of future papers from our group reporting the use of ruthenium radioisotopes. The project was realized together with colleagues in Switzerland at the Paul Scherrer Institute. Congratulations to all authors!

14.10.2023

To celebrate the opening of our new hotlabs and wetlabs at the University campus UZA II, we invited our new neighbours for a BBQ on one of the last warm and sunny days of the year before fall starts. Great event with hotdogs & pumpkins and cold beverage. Nice to meet and chat with our new colleagues at the UZA II and get to know them a bit better.

02.10.2023

Today starts our new colleague Julia (Jay) Friesenbichler. She will support us in all biological work, especially cell culture and cell experiments by bringing in her expertise in medical and pharmaceutical biotechnology. Welcome Julia to our group and we wish you all a good start!

26.08.2023

Our newest review on “Theranostics with photodynamic therapy for personalized medicine: to see and to treat” has just been accepted for publication in the high impact factor journal Theranostics. Read up on the background of Niko´s (AG Mindt, UniVie) and Youchao´s (AG Gasser, Chimie ParisTech, Paris, France) project funded by the Austrian FWF (I 5721-N) and the French ANR (AAPG2021).
Congrats to the authors – what took long, finally ends well 😀.

14.08.2023

Today, Robin Maradan starts his PhD studies in the AG Mindt. He will work on a FWF funded project aiming at new applications of pretargeting approaches (FWF P36706-B) in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Wanek of the Medical University of Vienna and Prof. Dr. Hannes Mikula of the Technische Universität Wien. Robin joins the AG Mindt from the University of Burgundy, France, where he was trained by Tom´s former postdoc in Switzerland, Dr. Ibai Valverde. Hearty welcome to Robin and good luck for your PhD studies in Vienna!

08.08.2023

Resulting from the successful and long-term collaboration with the Gasser group at Chimie ParisTech, check out our most recent publication on “Towards Ruthenium(II)-Rhenium(I) Binuclear Complexes as Photosensitizers for Photodynamic Therapy” (doi.org/10.1002/cbic.202300467).

07.08.2023

Exciting news: The new octadentate chelator DFO* for the stable complexation of Zirconium-89 (⁸⁹Zr) invented by the groups of Mindt and Gasser (https://doi.org/10.1039/C4CC05558F), which has been shown by Danielle Vugts and coworkers in Amsterdam to be superior to the current ⁸⁹Zr standard chelator DFO (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-016-3499-x), has now entered the clinic. Led by PI C.W. Menke-van der Houven van Oordt, MD, PhD, of the Amsterdam UMC, ⁸⁹Zr-DFO*-trastuzumab is investigated for the first time in patients as immunoPET agent for the diagnosis of HER2-positive breast or gastric cancer (https://ichgcp.net/clinical-trials-registry/NCT05955833). First results of the clinical study are eagerly awaited.

30.06.2023

After the 7-year funding period of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society (https://lbg.ac.at/), our institute LBIAD (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Applied Diagnostics) comes to an end. The LBIAD was a successful project that connected people from different research fields of the University of Vienna and the Medical University Vienna ranging form basic science to clinical applications. As the former head of the program line Imaging Biomarker, I am grateful for having been given the opportunity to be part of the LBIAD team.

With the newly founded Joint Applied Medicinal Radiochemistry Facility of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna, the established scientific network and collaborations of researchers in radiopharmacy/chemistry, pathology, pharmacology, health economics and nuclear medicinal will continue.

29.06.2023

Today, the farewell of Veronika Felber and Anna Stingeder took place at the pub Highlander. Good food and cold drinks 😀. Thank you Vroni and Anna for your important contributions to the working group AG Mindt. We wish you all the very best and success in future! Of course, we will stay in touch.

22.-26.05.2023

The most important congress in the field of radiochemical/pharmaceutical sciences, the International Symposium on Radiopharmaceutical Sciences (iSRS), took place this year in Honolulu, Hawaii (USA).
Irene Feiner and Julia Kronberger represented the AG Mindt on the tropical island and gave each a poster presentation.

30.03.2023

Our annual AG Mindt field trip brought us to the the famous Viennese museum of fine arts where we participated in a Mystery Hunt! The objective was to find exihibts following carfully drafted and arty little cards containing clues and hints. Afterwards we enjoyed a real Swiss fondue (and raclette) at the Swiss restaurant Chamäleon in the 1st district. Delicious melted cheese!

30.03.2023

Today, Raphael Posch defended his Master thesis entitled Synthesis & evaluation of modified RM2 radiopeptides for the delivery of [¹¹¹In]Indium to diseased tissue. Thanks Raphi for your hard work and good luck for the future!

27.03.2023

Read up on solid phase peptide synthesis in the paper of Xabier Guarrochena and Barbara Kaudela that just came out in the Journal of Peptide Science: Automated solid-phase synthesis of metabolically stabilized triazolo-peptidomimetics – https://doi.org/10.1002/psc.3488. Congrats Xabi and Barbara!