The University of Missouri announced selected projects to be funded through the Research and Creative Works Strategic Investment Program, including a new Radiopharmacology Core on August 8th, 2019. The $50 million funding initiative includes $2 million to establish the Core, which is a partnership between the MU Research Reactor (MURR®), the School of Medicine, and the Colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Arts & Science.  The announcement stated:

MU is the only university in the United States to have brought three FDA-approved radiopharmaceuticals to market, demonstrating our position as a national leader in radiopharmacology. This project aims to build on that success by providing critical infrastructure and collaborative expertise to researchers who have ideas that can attract national funding, but lack the personal expertise or laboratory facilities to fully develop a radiopharmaceutical product. The long-term vision is to develop a research pipeline where radiopharmaceutical agents can be developed by faculty across the system, tested in cell cultures and small animals at the Institute for Nano and Molecular Innovation (INMI), then in large animals at the Veterinary Health Center, with eventual first-in-person studies at the NextGen Precision Health Institute.

The Radiopharmacology Core project will be led by J. David Robertson (MURR), Silvia Jurisson (Chemistry), Jeffrey Bryan (Veterinary Medicine), and Tom Quinn (Biochemistry).