Rate My Professor Kristofer Thurecht

Professor Kristofer Thurecht, affiliated with the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and School of Chemistry at the University of Queensland, holds a Bachelor of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy from the same institution, completing his PhD in 2005. He currently serves as Interim Executive Institute Director of AIBN, Senior Group Leader of the Thurecht Group, Deputy Director of Imaging Technologies at UQ’s Centre for Advanced Imaging, Director of the ARC Research Hub for Advanced Manufacture of Targeted Radiopharmaceuticals, and theme leader in the ARC Training Centre for Innovation in BioMedical Imaging Technology. Since his PhD, Professor Thurecht has received five competitive national and international fellowships, including an ARC Future Fellowship and an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship. His accolades include the 2012 Queensland Young Tall Poppy Science Award, the 2010 UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award, and the 2015 David Sangster Polymer Science and Technology Award from the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Polymer Division.

Professor Thurecht's research specializes in the development of polymer and nanoparticle-based nanomedicines for theranostics, molecular imaging, and targeted drug delivery, particularly for cancer treatment. His work explores the structure-function relationships of nanomaterials in vivo and the production of radiopharmaceuticals. As Chief Investigator, he has secured over $36 million in funding from bodies such as ARC and NHMRC, enabling collaborations with leading researchers and industry partners including AdvanCell Isotopes, Clarity Pharmaceuticals, and Telix Pharmaceuticals. He is co-inventor on eight patents and serves as Associate Editor for Molecular Pharmaceutics. Notable publications encompass "Nanoparticle-Based Medicines: A Review of FDA-Approved Materials and Clinical Trials to Date" (Pharmaceutical Research, 2016), "Multimodal Polymer Nanoparticles with Combined 19F Magnetic Resonance and Optical Detection for Tunable, Targeted, Multimodal Imaging in Vivo" (Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2014), "Targeted and modular architectural polymers employing bioorthogonal chemistry for quantitative therapeutic delivery" (Chemical Science, 2020), and "Understanding the Uptake of Nanomedicines at Different Stages of Brain Cancer Using a Modular Nanocarrier Platform and Precision Bispecific Antibodies" (ACS Central Science, 2020). His contributions have significantly advanced the field of nanomedicine translation.