Rate My Professor Anu Airaksinen

Airaksinen's research centers on radiopharmaceutical chemistry, PET radiochemistry, pretargeted PET imaging, image-guided drug delivery, theranostics, and nanotheranostics. She develops novel PET radiotracers for brain research and nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery using short-lived positron emitters, with emphasis on organic radiosynthesis, production methods including microfluidics, radioligand optimization for structure, binding specificity, metabolism, and molar activity. Her group at Turku PET Centre advances these areas, including radiosynthesis of peptides and evaluation in vivo. Notable publications include "Fluorine-18 Radiolabeled Single-Chain Antibody Variable Fragment 1F4 Targets α1-Subunit Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid Type A Receptors in Mice" (Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2026), "Biological Evaluation of Molecular Spherical Nucleic Acids: Targeting Tumors via a Hybridization-Based Folate Decoration" (ACS Omega, 2025), "Rapid cleavage of 6-[18F]fluoronicotinic acid prosthetic group governs BT12 glioblastoma xenograft uptake" (EJNMMI Radiopharmacy and Chemistry, 2025), "Switching the Chemoselectivity in the Preparation of [18F]FNA-N-CooP" (Molecular Pharmaceutics, 2024), and "Development of an In Vitro Assay for Evaluation of Intracellular SPAAC Reactions Using Hoechst-DBCO" (Chemical & Biomedical Imaging, 2026). She has been honored with the GSK Young Investigator Award in 2006 and the JLCR Young Scientist Award in 2007. Airaksinen teaches courses such as Fundamentals of Radiochemistry, Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry, and Radiosynthetic Techniques at the University of Turku.