From Bench to Clinic: The Scientific Track Record Behind Adracco

THE CONTEXT

Adracco’s scientific leadership has already navigated the path many radiopharmaceutical developers are working to solve today: taking a targeted imaging agent from molecular design through preclinical validation, clinical translation, and commercial development.

In 2017, research by Adracco's Benjamin Larimer, PhD, and colleagues demonstrated a new approach to measuring whether cancer immunotherapy was working—before traditional imaging could show changes in tumor size.

The work centered on granzyme B, a protease released by cytotoxic T cells as they actively kill tumor cells. Rather than waiting weeks or months to observe tumor response, Larimer and collaborators developed a PET imaging approach designed to visualize that immune activity directly.

BUILDING A TRANSLATIONAL PET TRACER

The program required more than identifying a promising biological target. Larimer’s work spanned the technical decisions that determine whether an imaging concept can advance beyond the bench: peptide substrate design, chelator conjugation, radionuclide selection, radiochemistry, pharmacokinetics, and in vivo validation.

The resulting probe used a chelator-conjugated, Ga-68-labeled peptide targeting granzyme B. Ga-68 provided pharmacokinetic characteristics suited to clinical translation, while the probe’s specificity enabled researchers to distinguish treatment responders from non-responders in preclinical models.

The findings were published in Cancer Research in 2017 in “Granzyme B PET Imaging as a Predictive Biomarker of Immunotherapy Response,” with Larimer as first author. Follow-on research expanded the platform to imaging the innate immune response.

The work also received federal support through an NIH K99/R00 award focused on quantitative PET imaging for predicting oncologic immunotherapy response.

THE EXPERIENCE BEHIND ADRACCO

Adracco was founded in 2025 to help sponsors move preclinical radiopharmaceutical programs forward with greater technical clarity at each decision point.

Adracco’s scientific leadership has worked through the decisions that can determine whether a radiopharmaceutical program advances or stalls: selecting and optimizing substrates, determining chelator and conjugation strategies, choosing an appropriate radionuclide, designing meaningful preclinical studies, and anticipating what later-stage development will require. That translation-aware perspective informs Adracco’s work today.

For teams developing peptide- and protease-targeted radiopharmaceuticals, the goal is not simply to generate promising preclinical data. It is to build a program that can withstand the next stage of development.

Adracco brings experience from that full journey to the preclinical decisions that come first.