Umesh Gangadharmath, PhD | Director of Radiochemistry

Dr. Umesh Gangadharmath is a recent addition to the NCPIC group as the Director of Radiochemistry and brings with him an extensive amount of radiochemistry and radiopharmaceutical experience. Umesh has designed and synthesized novel radiopharmaceuticals for use in positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of oncology, cardiology and neurological targets, including a marker for hypoxia (¹⁸F-HX4), apoptosis (¹⁸F-CP18) and markers for Tau (¹⁸F-T808/T807). He was an early adopter of ‘click chemistry’ as a tool to accelerate PET radiopharmaceutical development. Umesh has extensive radiosynthesis process optimization and has established PET tracer manufacturing sites globally (US, EU and Asia) to support PET imaging-based clinical trials. Dr. Gangadharmath has published several peer reviewed articles in PET and is an inventor on multiple radiopharmaceutical patents. He received his M.Sc and Ph.D in Inorganic chemistry from Karnatak University Dharwad, India in 2002 and was a former post-doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2005.