TRIM Group congratulates Ph.D. researcher Surachet Imlimthan on successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis in Radiochemistry titled "Development and Biological Evaluation of Theranostic Nanosystems Based on Nanocrystalline Cellulose and Lignin Nanoparticles". The opponent for the public examination was Prof. Jason Holland of the Department of Chemistry, University of Zürich, Switzerland and the custos Prof. Gareth Law.
Surachet has conducted his Ph.D. studies under the mentorship of Dr. Mirkka Sarparanta from September 2016 when he joined the lab after receiving a M.Sc. degree in Bioengineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Surachet's work has led to the development of radiolabeled and fluorescently labeled tracers for cellulose nanocrystals and lignin nanoparticles for investigation of the potential for using these materials as nanoscale drug delivery systems. In the course of the work he developed a theranostic platform based on nanocrystalline cellulose for the simultaneous delivery of lutetium-177 radiotherapy and vemurafenib chemotherapy in a mouse model of metastatic melanoma to the lung, reported in the nanotechnology journal Small in March 2021. Besides his own Ph.D. research, Surachet has been integral to many collaborative projects of the TRIM group and has become the in-house expert in preclinical evaluation of radiopharmaceuticals. Surachet's Ph.D. work has been made possible by funding from the University of Helsinki, the Academy of Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.
We wish we can all celebrate this fantastic achievement together when the pandemic situation improves!
Articles included in the thesis
Imlimthan, S., Otaru, S., Keinänen, O., Correia, A., Lintinen, K., Almeida Santos, H., Airaksinen, A., Kostiainen, M., & Sarparanta, M. (2019). Radiolabeled Molecular Imaging Probes for the in Vivo Evaluation of Cellulose Nanocrystals for Biomedical Applications. Biomacromolecules, 20(2), 674–683. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.8b01313
Imlimthan, S., Correia, A., Figueiredo, P. I., Lintinen, K., Balasubramanian, V., Airaksinen, A., Kostiainen, M. A., Almeida Santos, H., & Sarparanta, M. P. (2020). Systematic in vitro biocompatibility studies of multimodal cellulose nanocrystal and lignin nanoparticles. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. Part A, 108(3), 770-783. https://doi.org/10.1002/jbm.a.36856
Imlimthan, S., Khng, Y-C., Keinanen, O. M., Zhang, W., Airaksinen, A., Kostiainen, M. A., Zeglis, B. M., Santos, H. A., & Sarparanta, M. (2021). A Theranostic Cellulose Nanocrystal-based Drug Delivery System with Enhanced Retention in Pulmonary Metastasis of Melanoma. Small, [2007705]. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202007705