Bertrand Tavitian, MD PhD, is Director of the Unit for In vivo Imaging of Gene Expression (UIEG) at the Medical Research Department of the CEA. His laboratory has a staff of 12 and is associated with INSERM (ERM 0103) and Paris XI University. It is part of the Service hospitalier Frédéric Joliot (SHFJ), one of the top five European imaging centres with 100+ staff in the fields of molecular and functional imaging, covering most aspects of biological and clinical applications in PET, SPECT, MRI, and basic imaging science. The centre is equipped with one cyclotron, two PET cameras, 3 SPECT cameras and small animal cameras (MICROPET scheduled June 2003). UIEG has a regular partnership for development of small animal imaging instruments with the biotech BIOSPACE and for radiotracer development with BIONEXIS. Expertises cover radiophysics, radiochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, pharmacology, image analysis and patient day care. There is a clinical pharmacology unit and the SHFJ is an authorised clinical radiopharmaceutical production centre. Bertrand Tavitian is recipient of the Special Award for Biological Applications of the American Nuclear Society and coordinator of the on-going Fifth Framework Programme OLIM (QLG1-CT-2000-00562).

• Radio- and fluo-labelling of biomolecules including oligonucleotides and peptides.
• Imaging with PET and SPECT and FMT in animals and Humans
• Drug and Radiopharmaceutical validation and filing for Exploitation.

• Tavitian B., Terrazzino S., Kühnast B., Marzabal S., Stettler O., Dollé F., Deverre J., Jobert A., Hinnen F., Bendriem B., Crouzel C., Di Giamberardino L. (1998) In vivo imaging of oligonucleotides with positron emission tomography. Nature Med 4(4): 467-471.
• Traykov L., Tavitian B., Jobert A., Boller F., Forette F., Crouzel C., Di Giamberardino L., Pappata S. (1999) In vivo PET study of cerebral [11C] methyl- tetrahydroaminoacridine distribution and kinetics in healthy human subjects. Eur. J. Neurol. 6(3): 273-278.
• Tavitian B. (2000) In vivo antisense imaging. Q. J. Nucl. Med. 44(3): 236-255.
• Tavitian, B., Marzabal, S., Boutet, V., Kühnast, B., Terrazzino, S., Moynier, M., Dollé, F., Deverre, JR, and Thierry, A. (2002) Characterization of a synthetic anionic vector for oligonucleotide delivery using in vivo whole body dynamic imaging. Pharm.Res. 19(4) :367-76
• Tavitian, B., Kühnast, B., and Klüssmann, S. Use of L-polynucleotides and method for labelling the same. AG, NOXXON Pharma and CEA. (EP 01114111.6.). 2001. European patent. 10-6-2001.