David R. Elmaleh

David R. Elmaleh is a scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He is an inventor of three drugs that are in use in man or in late stage clinical trials including: the radiopharmaceutical preparation of (2FDG) which has been used in over a million PET imaging procedures, Beta-methyl modified fatty acid (BMIPP) a commercially successful cardiac SPECT agent, and Altropane which has completed Phase III clinical trials. He is a co-author on over 120 publications and an inventor on dozens of issued and pending patents in a range of disciplines, including molecular imaging and pharmaceuticals.

Elmaleh holds a BSc in Physics and Chemistry, and an MS and PhD in Chemistry from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1976 he became an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Contrast Media Chemistry at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Elmaleh's recent work includes advanced imaging compounds to improve the speed and effectiveness of cardiovascular disease diagnosis. Dr. Elmaleh is a recipient of numerous NIH and DOE awards, and has participated as a reviewer for the National Institute of Health (NIH).

In 1998 Elmaleh led a team that showed that nuclear medicine could be used to find incipient plaque long before these fatty deposits narrow vessels and cause angina and other symptoms of atherosclerosis in rabbits. The study was done in order to help the early prediction of the risk of stroke or cardiac arrest in human patients.

Companies

In 1997 Elmaleh was the scientific founder of Imaging Biopharmaceuticals, now called Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals. The company researched and developed targeted therapeutic and imaging radiopharmaceuticals for cancer. In 2001 Elmaleh was the scientific founder of Mersana Therapeutics under its original name NanoPharma, a company that developed novel cancer therapeutics. In 2003 he co-founded FluoroPharma, a company based upon his biopharmaceutical patents. He is also the co-founder of PureTech Ventures, where he currently serves as a senior advisor. In 2011 he co-founded the firm AZTherapies, a developer of Alzheimer’s disease drugs, where he currently serves as Executive Chairman, and Chief Scientific Advisor. He has been named by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News as one of the biotechnology industry's top thirteen serial entrepreneurs.

Fluorine-18-FDG synthesis

In 1982, a new and more efficient method of fluorine-18-FDG synthesis, which used an anhydrous fluoride salt, was developed by Dr. David Elmaleh and Shlomo Levi at MGH (Mass General Hospital). Fluorine-18 could be produced more easily in a cyclotron as a fluoride salt and was easier to handle than fluorine gas. With this new synthetic method, FDG could be produced in a three-step process with over 20% yield, which was significantly better than the previous one which entailed five steps and a 10-12% yield. "This synthetic method was patented by Elmaleh and Levi. However, Wolf and Fowler filed for patent abandonment and the MGH derived no benefit.". Later Kurt Hamacher made a modification of Elmaleh and Levi’s method and that method is now used in commercial FDG production. FDG-PET is an imaging agent that is widely used. It provides a readout for the rate of glucose metabolism which is usually abnormally high in areas of inflammation and in tumors and conversely is abnormally low due to ischemia or neurodegeneration. The concept of FDG-PET was developed by Alfred Wolf, Joanna Fowler and colleagues. However, that original method for FDG synthesis was not practically viable.

Additional research

Elmaleh developed a method of altering the metabolic pathway so that it would trap an imaging drug in a specific metabolic pathway, allowing a static image of organs and tissues. The increased the scope of radiopharmaceutical agents and usefulness of the images taken of the interior. Elmaleh has also led medical teams into Parkinson's Disease research, including the development of the medical uses of altropane and its ability to differentiate between normal and abnormal brain cells.