Lilit Hakobyan

Yerevan State University / Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry

Advisor: Prof. Armen Mkrtchyan

Lilit Hakobyan designs bifunctional chelator molecules that can coordinate two clinically relevant radiometals — ⁶⁸Ga for PET imaging and ²²⁵Ac for targeted alpha therapy — using the same core scaffold attached to a prostate-specific membrane antigen-targeting urea inhibitor. A matched imaging-therapy pair of this type (a theranostic pair) would enable PSMA-targeted treatment of metastatic prostate cancer where the same patient is first imaged with ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA PET to confirm uptake, then treated with the ²²⁵Ac version at a dosimetry-guided activity. At Yerevan State University's Chemistry Faculty, supervised by Prof. Armen Mkrtchyan, Lilit has synthesised 12 macrocyclic chelator variants differing in ring size, donor-atom composition, and bifunctional arm connectivity. Radiolabelling experiments with carrier-added ⁶⁸Ga and ²²⁵Ac produced by the Yerevan Physics Institute cyclotron and accelerator facility demonstrate that her NETA-PSMA-11 analogue labels at >98% radiochemical purity within 15 minutes at 95 °C and maintains intact complex in human serum for 96 hours. An IAEA Technical Cooperation fellowship to a Vienna radiopharmacy research centre and a co-investigator role on an ARPA-H theranostics grant both extend her international radiopharmaceutical network.