Yaser Gholami

University of Sydney/ANSTO Facility Fellow

Dr Yaser Hadi Gholami is a physicist in the field of applied physics in nuclear medicine. His research (at both clinical and pre-clinical level) has been focused on the fields of nanomedicine, radionuclide therapy and imaging, radiation physics and biology, nuclear chemistry and Monte Carlo simulation. During August and November 2019, he worked at the Division of Nuclear Medicine and Biophysics at Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as a visiting research associate and developed a novel theory for positron annihilation localization by nanoscale magnetization. He was selected as the winner of the prestigious 2020 Physics Grand Challenges (from the School of Physics, Usyd) to establish a quantum-medicine-platform for studying the quantum properties of cancer cells using positronium lifetime spectroscopy which could represent a paradigm shift for cancer medicine in the 21st century in near future. Dr Gholami in collaboration with Harvard Medical School/MGH has developed a chelate-free Nanoparticle radiolabelling technique for simultaneous PET/MR imaging and radionuclide therapy. He has also invented a novel method for positron annihilation localisation using nanoscale magnetisation for PET/MR imaging. He has also been collaborating with OncoSil Medical Company in developing personalised 32P microparticle therapy and contributed to achieving IDE approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and International Clinical Study. In addition, in collaboration with the Varian company he has established a radiobiological modelling platform whereby using pre- and post-treatment FDG PET/CT images plus the 90Y PET/CT of the radionuclide therapy, in addition to radiosensitivity of the tumour cells, valuable information on the temporal changes in FDG distribution of tumour can be derived.