Specialization
Focus of research
Daniela Oprea-Lager obtained her Medical Doctor degree in 2004 from the University of Leiden. She completed her specialization in Nuclear Medicine at the Leiden University Medical Center in 2009. From 2009 up to now Daniela is working as nuclear medicine physician at the Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine of Amsterdam University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, location VUmc. She obtained het PhD in Medicine in 2016 with the thesis entitled “Towards personalized therapy for metastatic prostate cancer: technical validation of [18]fluoromethylcholine”, being the 1st nuclear medicine physician in Amsterdam UMC opening the research gate in the field of imaging in uro-oncology.
Her research interest concentrate on the early detection of (recurrent) prostate cancer, implementation of new oncological tracers in clinical practice, monitoring treatment effects and therapy in prostate cancer. In this frame she played a key role in the granting and conducting of several projects in the field of uro-oncology, firstly by using the [18F]Choline tracer and later on, the [18F] radiolabeled prostate- specific membrane antigen (PSMA) tracer. Several examples are 4 CCA grants obtained in 2016, 2018 (2x) and 2019, as well as the Movember grant obtained from the Prostate Cancer Fonds, in International collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering New York and Monash, Victoria, Australia, for the proposal titled “Characterizing Mechanisms of Sensitivity and Resistance to Anti-Androgen Therapy with Whole-Body Molecular Imaging”.
Daniela is also involved in the Immuno-oncology domain, having an intensive and nice collaboration with the pre-clinical and clinical Oncology Departments, also with the participation of the Chemistry and Physics Groups within the Radiology and Nuclear medicine Department, VUmc location. She is involved in the Imaging Workgroup for research on “Specific Imaging of Immune Cell Dynamics Using Novel Tracer Strategies for which a prestigious IMI grant was awarded from EU in 2019.
Based on her expertise and research line, Daniela became in 2019 the Chair of the PSMA Forum NL, a multidisciplinary platform for all specialists involved in prostate cancer, in the Netherlands. Last year, she also became the chair of the oligometastatic subgroup within the Imaging Workgroup of EORTC, Brussel. In 2020, Daniela was accepted as a member of the European Association of Urology, for her contribution, as coauthor, to the Guidelines for Prostate cancer, published in May 2020. Daniela has (co)authored more than 40 peer reviewed papers, and has currently 5 PhD students, two of them being already scheduled for the PhD defense in November 2020.