Buck Rogers, PhD
Associate Director, Cancer Biology Division
Professor of Radiation Oncology
- Phone: 314-362-9787
- Email: b.rogers@nospam.wustl.edu
Additional Titles
- Professor of Radiology
- Adjunct Professor of Chemistry
Education
- BS, Chemistry: Loyola University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1989)
- MA, Chemistry: Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1991)
- PhD, Inorganic Chemistry: Washington University, St. Louis, MO (1995)
Recognition
- Hope Award: American Cancer Society (2006)
Biography
Buck Rogers, PhD, is a tenured professor of radiation oncology and radiology. He earned a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 1995 and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). In 2002, he returned to Washington University as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor (tenured) in 2007 and Professor in 2011. Dr. Rogers has co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers in national and international journals as well as numerous abstracts, book chapters, and patents. He is also an Editor for Nuclear Medicine and Biology and Current Medical Imaging Reviews. He is a member of several societies and has served on Study Sections for the NIH, Department of Energy, and American Cancer Society. He is Vice-Chair of the Radiation Safety Committee, a member of the Oncologic Imaging Leadership Committee for the Siteman Cancer Center, and the current President of the Center for Molecular Imaging, Innovation, and Translation within the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.
Research
Dr. Rogers is a NIH funded Professor of Radiation Oncology and the Associate Director of the Cancer Biology Division. Dr. Rogers has more than 20 years of experience in radiochemistry, gene therapy, and novel radiation therapeutics. He has extensive experience in the development of radiolabeled antibodies and peptides for targeted imaging and therapy of cancer. In particular, he investigated copper-64 which is used for positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging and potentially for therapy. These studies were very important in the development of new chelators that have allowed the use of Cu-64 in clinical trials. Dr. Rogers tags proteins and peptides with radioactivity in combination with a gene transfer method to develop a novel imaging/therapy paradigm with a team of collaborators. This approach uses an adenoviral gene therapy vector that encodes a gene for a cell surface receptor. This receptor can then be targeted with radioactive substrates for imaging or therapy applications. These studies have had major implications in the field of gene therapy in that these gene transfer vectors can now be imaged to determine the location and extent of gene transfer as well as potential synergistic therapy with the appropriate radionuclides. Lastly, Dr. Rogers has led research that targets the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPR), which is a G-protein coupled receptor and been shown to be upregulated in a variety of cancers. Bombesin is a fourteen amino acid peptide that binds with high affinity to GRPR. He has tagged bombesin or bombesin analogues with radionuclides for PET imaging of GRPR-expressing tumors in preclinical models. He has evaluated several analogues and several radionuclides. These studies have led to dramatic improvement in peptide radiopharmaceuticals and their evaluation in clinical studies.
Publications
(Disclaimer: This listing may not include all articles associated with this faculty member and may include publications related to others with a similar name.)