Peter Caravan
Eddie Goldenberg Distinguished Research Chair of Canada in Translational Molecular Imaging and Therapy
Dr. Peter Caravan is a world-leading molecular imaging scientist whose work has transformed both the science and clinical practice of targeted imaging and theranostics — an approach that combines diagnostic imaging with targeted treatment. He is internationally recognized as a leading authority on the design of molecular probes for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET), understanding how these probes work in the body, and translating them into tools that can be used in patient care.
What is the main challenge your Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada program is addressing, and how are you approaching it?
My research focuses on inventing and developing new medicines for diagnosing and treating disease. Current imaging tools such as MRI, ultrasound and CT scans are powerful ways to look inside the body to detect abnormal changes in tissues, but they also have limitations. For example, they may not detect disease at an early stage when it is more easily treated; they may not accurately assess disease severity; and they may not determine whether the changes are due to active or prior disease.
My program will develop molecules that can target certain proteins or cell types that are only elevated in active diseases. These molecules can be detected through what is known as molecular imaging with MRI or PET scans. We will similarly design therapeutics that couple this targeting function with specific modes of treating a disease such as high-energy radiation to eliminate cancer cells. Together, these related diagnostic and therapeutic molecules are known as theranostics and enable a personalized medicine approach.
What is the main thing you would like to achieve as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and what are the potential impacts of your work?
The overall goal of my program is to develop new, more precise and personalized treatments for cancer and other diseases. To do this, I aim to invent new molecular imaging probes; more accurately quantify disease by combining molecular imaging with other advanced imaging techniques; and invent and advance theranostics into human clinical trials. We also aim to train the next generation of highly qualified personnel and stimulate company creation and employment by developing new treatments that can provide enormous health benefits to Canadians and patients worldwide.
What is your primary motivation behind the research you do? What drew you to this work?
My primary motivation is improving human health, specifically by developing molecular probes for MRI and PET imaging that can noninvasively detect disease at an early stage, quantify disease activity, and sensitively track whether it's progressing or responding to treatment. We're also using imaging to identify which patients are likely to benefit from a specific therapy, and to design new molecular radiotherapies for cancer.
What drew me to this work is deeply personal. I've watched family members go through chronic illness, an experience that is unfortunately far too common. My mother is the clearest example: imperfect diagnostic imaging meant a treatable, curable cancer was missed, and it wasn't caught until it had already spread throughout her body. Better imaging at that earlier stage would have changed her outcome and her life expectancy entirely. After her diagnosis, she endured a harsh course of chemotherapy that, in the end, had no effect on the cancer's growth. The standard approach is to treat first and only later find out, through routine imaging, whether the tumors are actually shrinking. If we'd had a tool to detect at the molecular level that the treatment wasn't working, she never would have had to go through that debilitating, ultimately futile course. And on the other side of that same coin, if molecular imaging had let us identify an effective therapy for her from the start, it likely would have both extended her life and meaningfully improved its quality.
What drew you to UBC to do this work, and what are you most looking forward to about coming here?
What drew me to UBC is the depth and concentration of talent working in molecular imaging and theranostics — both within UBC itself and at affiliated institutions like BC Cancer. It's rare to find a hub where so many people are pushing on the same fundamental problems from different angles, and that density is exactly what I need: my own goal isn't just to invent new molecular imaging probes and theranostics, it's to get them translated into clinical trials as fast as possible, so they can actually start benefiting patients. That kind of translation doesn't happen in isolation — it requires exactly the collaborative ecosystem UBC and BC Cancer have built.
TRIUMF is a major part of that draw as well. The ability to collaborate closely with a national lab that gives access to such a wide range of radioisotopes is genuinely unique, and it's hard to overstate how much that shortens the distance between an idea for a new probe and actually being able to build and test it. For someone whose whole motivation is accelerating that bench-to-bedside pipeline, having that infrastructure right here rather than something I'd need to negotiate access to elsewhere is a real advantage.
And beyond the people and the infrastructure, there's UBC's history of innovation and its broader institutional vision for transformative technologies. That combination — strong existing talent, unusual access to isotopes through TRIUMF, and an institution genuinely oriented toward pushing new technology forward — is what makes UBC feel like the right place to do this work.
What I'm most looking forward to is exactly that: taking new probes and theranostic agents from concept through to clinical trials faster than I could almost anywhere else, by leaning on the collaborative environment here rather than trying to build every piece of that pipeline myself. That acceleration, getting new tools into patients' hands sooner, is the whole reason I do this work in the first place.
What does it mean to you to have been appointed as an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada, and how is it going to help you advance your already internationally recognized research?
Being appointed an Eddie Goldenberg Research Chair of Canada means a great deal to me, both personally and in terms of what it makes possible scientifically. This is a brand-new, highly selective program, part of the federal government's broader initiative to bring leading international researchers to Canada, and it's designed specifically to support work with real potential for translation and impact, not just discovery for its own sake. That mandate lines up exactly with what has driven my research career: inventing new molecular imaging probes and theranostics isn't the end goal for me, getting them into clinical trials and ultimately into the hands of physicians and patients is.
There's also a very personal dimension to this appointment. I'm Canadian. I did my undergraduate degree at Acadia University in Nova Scotia and my PhD right here at UBC, and I spent the years since building my research career in the United States. This Chair is, in a very real sense, an opportunity to come home, not just to Canada, but to the institution where I actually trained as a scientist. Everything that I've developed since then, the expertise in probe design, the relationships with industry and clinical collaborators, the experience translating agents through to human trials, I now get to bring back and reinvest in the country and the university that gave me my start.
Practically, the chair gives me the resources to accelerate that translation in a way that would otherwise take much longer. The funding is substantial enough to support a real research program over a sustained period, and the accompanying infrastructure funding means I can build out capabilities here rather than relying entirely on outside partnerships for every step between an idea and a clinical-grade probe. Combined with the collaborative environment at UBC, BC Cancer and TRIUMF, this chair removes several of the practical bottlenecks that normally slow down research in translational imaging and therapy.
What it means to me personally is a recognition that the work matters, paired with the chance to repay something of what UBC and Canada invested in me at the start of my career. It's also a responsibility. A chair like this comes with an expectation to deliver something that genuinely benefits the Canadian research ecosystem and, ultimately, patients, and I take that seriously. I see it as the next stage of the same mission that's driven me all along: closing the gap between a good idea in the lab and a tool or medicine that changes outcomes in the clinic.
