Klaus Kopka

Professor Klaus Kopka holds a full Professorship (W3) at the Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg, Germany, and is head of the Division of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry of the German Cancer Research Centre (dkfz) Heidelberg, Germany. His research focuses on radiopharmaceutical sciences with focus on radiopharmaceutical drug development in combination with medicinal chemistry, in recent years directed to the development of novel theranostic radiotracers targeting the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA). Since 2012 Klaus has been the Chairman of the Working Group Radiochemistry / Radiopharmacy (AGRR) Committee of the German Association of Nuclear Medicine (DGN). He was honoured with the Young Molecular Cardiovascular Imaging Award of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences (Duesseldorf). He is author and co-author of more than 120 publications and inventor and co-inventor on more than 10 published patents, primarily dealing with the development of new PET tracers and radiopharmaceuticals for endoradiotherapy. Currently, Klaus is the radiopharmaceutical coordinator of the prospective multi-centre clinical trial of the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK) 68Ga-PSMA-11 in high-risk prostate cancer. This endeavour, dealing with accurate prostate PET imaging, is recognized as one of the defined DKTK highlight projects.