2009 News

Hua Fan-Minogue Awarded Travel Fellowship

December 14, 2009
Hua Fan-Minogue, PhD, SMIS Fellow and member of the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, was awarded a Travel Fellowship from the Helena Anna Henzl Gabor Young Women in Science Fund to attend AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010, at Washington DC, from April 17, 2010 to April 21, 2010.

Congratulations, Hua!


Arne Vandenbrouke Received Department of Defense Fellowship

December 10, 2009
Arne Vandenbrouke of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL) has been awarded a 3 year post-doctoral fellowship from the Department of Defense (DOD) Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) of the Office of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). The topic of Dr. Vandenbrouke's research is the commissioning and characterization of the world's first 1 mm^3 resolution clinical PET camera.

Congratulations, Arne!


David Wang Received 2009 RSNA Travel Award

December 8, 2009
David Wang, a post doctoral fellow in the Translational Molecular Imaging Lab, received a 2009 RSNA Travel Award for Young Investigators in Molecular Imaging for his paper, "Cationic Microbubble Contrast Agents Enhance Ultrasound-Mediated Gene Delivery in a Mouse Model of Tumor Angiogenesis".

Congratulations, David!


Guillem Pratx Successfully Defended Doctoral Thesis

December 4, 2009
Guillem Pratx, a graduate student in the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL) has successfully defended his doctoral thesis. His thesis topics involved the development of advanced signal processing strategies for the next-generation of positron emission tomography (PET) systems.

Congratulations, Guillem!


Pejman Ghanouni & Vijay Rao Received 2009 RSNA Research Trainee Awards

December 2, 2009
Pejman Ghanouni and Vijay Rao, both from the Molecular Imaging of Musculoskeletal Illnesses (MIMI) Lab, were both awarded 2009 Radiological Society of North America Research Trainee Awards. Pejman for his paper, "Minocycline Prevents Development of Neuropathic Pain by Mitigating Macrophage Recruitment to Site of Nerve Injury as Shown with USPIO-MRI", and Vijay for, "[18F]Fluoride Ion PET-CT Predicts Painful Metastatic Bone Lesions in the Thoracolumbar Spine".

Congratulations, Pejman and Vijay!


Dr. Gambhir Received 2009 RSNA Outstanding Research Award

November 30, 2009
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, received the 2009 Radiological Society of Northern America (RSNA) Outstanding Research Award for his original and significant contributions to the field of radiology.

Congratulations, Dr. Gambhir!


Lasitha Senadheera Received DoD PCRP Training Award

November 23, 2009
Lasitha Senadheera, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Image Guided Intervention Laboratory (IGIL), has recently received a postdoctoral fellowship from Department of Defense to support his research initiative in therapeutic response monitoring of radiation treatment by hyperpolarized 13C metabolic imaging. This multidisciplinary project will be mentored by Profs. L. Xing and D. Spielman (Radiology) and will be leveraged by the outstanding expertise and resources available at Stanford. Indeed, in cancer imaging, one of the major problems is the lack of biological imaging techniques for accurate tumor target definition and for assessing the therapeutic response. 13C MRSI is an exciting new area of research and has the potential to provide an unprecedented >50,000 fold signal enhancement in MR spectroscopic imaging signal. Using hyperpolarized 13C pyruvate substrate, Lasitha hope to observe the changes in pyruvate metabolism, including lactate production (which has been considered as a hallmark of tumor cells), during cancer therapeutics. Congratulations and best of luck in the proposed study.

Congratulations, Lasitha!


Peter Olcott Received 2009 IEEE NSS/MIC Student Paper Award

November 15, 2009
Peter Olcott, a graduate student in the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL), received Second Place from the Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference for his paper, "Cross-strip capacitive multiplexing and electro-optical coupling for silicon photomultiplier arrays for PET detectors".

Congratulations, Peter!


Dr. Paulmurugan Appointed as Assistant Professor

November 12, 2009
Congratulations to Dr. Ramasamy Paulmurugan for being appointed as Assistant Professor.

Congratulations, Professor Paulmurugan!


Dr. Levin Promoted to Full Professor

November 10, 2009
Congratulations to Dr. Craig Levin for his promotion to Full Professor.

Congratulations, Professor Levin!


2009 Medical Imaging Conference Trainee Award Recipients

November 6, 2009
Yi Gu, Peter Olcott, Hao Peng, Virgina Spanoudaki, and Arne Vandenbrouke, members of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory, are all recipients of the 2009 Trainee Award to attend the 2009 Medical Imaging Conference in Orlando FL, October 25-31.

Congratulations, Yi, Peter, Hao, Virgina and Arne!


Peter Olcott Received Bio-X Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship in Human Health

October 16, 2009
Congratulations to Peter Olcott of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory who received the Bio-X Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship in Human Health. This award is one of the greatest honors Stanford gives to a doctoral student pursuing interdisciplinary research.

Congratulations, Peter!


New NCI Physical Sciences-Oncology Centers (PS-OC) U54 Grant awarded to USC in collaboration with Stanford for $16M

October 26, 2009
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded $16M to University of Southern California in collaboration with Stanford University to establish a Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (PS-OC). Professor of engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and professor of research medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, W. Daniel Hillis, is the principal investigator. Collaborators at Stanford are Dr. Sam GambhirDr. Shan WangDr. Steve Quake, and Dr. Garry Nolan.

The goal of the five year initiative is to engage trans-disciplinary scientific teams from fields of physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering to examine new, non-traditional approaches to cancer research.


MIPS Research Featured in Nature News & Views

October 27, 2009
Work from the Center for Cancer Nanotehnology Excellence (CCNE) between the Wang lab and Gambhir lab on an ultrasensitive, matrix-indpendent, high-throughput mangento-nano sensor technology for proteomics has been published in Nature Medicine. This work was covered in detail by Nature in the News and Views.


MIPS Research Discussed in PNAS Journal Highlights

October 13, 2009
A new article entitled, "A strategy for blood biomarker amplification and localization using ultrasound," by Aloma L. D'Souza, Jeffrey R. Tseng, Kim Butts Pauly, Samira Guccione, Jarrett Rosenberg, Sanjiv S. Gambhir, and Gary M. Glazer published in PNAS is discussed in the Journal highlights.


Tiger Ren Paper Featured on MDLinx.com

September 24, 2009
The just-published Journal of Nuclear Medicine paper "Melanin-Targeted Preclinial PET Imaging of Melanoma Metastasis" by Tiger Ren, member of the Cancer Molecular Imaging Chemistry Laboratory (CMICL), was featured on MDLinx.com.

Congratulations, Tiger!


Paper on iPS Cells Receives Media Coverage

September 10, 2009
A recent study published by Ning Sun, PhD working in the laboratory of Joseph Wu and Michael Longaker on derivation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from fat received significant media attention in NatureNews, Scientific American, CNN, Reuters, National Geographics, Bloomberg, LA Times, NBC Bay Area, UK Telegraph and other outlets.


Levin, Foudray and Habte Authors of Top Ten Cited Papers in Physica Medica

August 11, 2009
Congratulations to the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL) authors of "Impact of high energy resolution detectors on the performance of a PET system dedicated to breast cancer imaging" which was one of the Top 10 cited papers (2006-2008) published in Physica Medica.

Congratulations, Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory!


Guillem Pratx Paper Selected as Featured Article by Institute of Physics

August 4, 2009
The just-published Physics in Medicine and Biology paper "Bayesian reconstruction of photon interaction sequences for high-resolution PET detectors" by Guillem Pratx, member of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL), has been selected as a Featured Article by the editors of the Institute of Physics Journals. Featured Articles are chosen for their novelty, high level of interest and potential impact on future research.

Congratulations, Guillem!


Avnesh S Thakor Received ACSBI Award From UICC

July 21, 2009
Avnesh S Thakor, a Visiting Scholar in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, has received an ACSBI Award from the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) for his research on Raman spectroscopy using SERS nanoparticles.

Congratulations, Avnesh!


Virginia Spanoudaki Received AXA Research Fund Fellowship

July 17, 2009
Virginia Spanoudaki, a postdoctoral fellow in the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Lab has been awarded an AXA Research Fund postdoctoral fellowship for her ground-breaking work on new concepts to advance time-of-flight positron emission tomography.

Congratulations Virginia!


John Ronald Received CIHR Fellowship

July 7, 2009
John Ronald, a post doctoral fellow in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, has received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Fellowship for his proposal, "Multimodality Cell Trafficking Imaging Using Optical Bioluminescent Imaging, Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)".

The award is a 3-year fellowship that provides support for highly qualified candidates at the post-PhD or post-health professional degree stages to add to their experience by engaging in health research either in Canada or abroad.

Congratulations, John!


Paper on a Photoactivable Bioluminescent Probe Featured in Analytica-World & Bionity

June 25, 2009
Work published in the Chemical Communication on the development of a photoactivable bioluminescent probe for imaging luciferase activity in live animals is featured in Analytica-World and Bionity. This work is a collaborative effort between the Cancer Molecular Imaging Chemistry Laboratory at Stanford and Dr. Bengang Xing's lab at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.


Laura Sasportas Awarded SNM Graduate Student Fellowship

Laura Sasportas of the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab has been awarded a Graduate Student Fellowship by the Society of Nuclear Medicine for her proposal, "In vivo Molecular Imaging of Circulating Tumor Cells and Early Invasion in a Human Cancer-Stem Cell Based Model of Breast Tumor".

The SNM Student Fellowships are designed to stimulate students' interest in molecular imaging/nuclear medicine by supporting their full-time participation in clinical and basic research activities for three months (or less).

Congratulations, Laura!


2009 SNM Image of the Year

June 17, 2008
Congratulations to Drs. Andrei Iagaru, Erik Mittra and Michael Goris who have been awarded the 2009 Society of Nuclear Medicine Image of the Year. The image is actually two sets of before-and-after PET scans of two patients that examines the effectiveness of two radioimmunotherapy agents in treating non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL). One patient was treated with Iodine-131 tositumomab, the other, Yttrium-90 ibritumomab tiuxetan.

"This image is really remarkable because it shows two positive benefits of molecular imaging and nuclear medicine at the same time," said Henry N. Wagner Jr.

Congratulations, Drs. Iagaru, Mittra and Goris!


Keren Ziv Received LSRF Fellowship

June 10, 2009
Congratulations to Keren Ziv, of the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, who has been awarded a Life Sciences Research Foundation fellowship for her proposal "Non-Invasive and Real-Time Monitoring of Stem Cells in Cancer and Myocardial Infarction".

The LSRF recognize that discoveries and the application of innovations in biology for the public's good will depend upon the training and support of the highest quality young scientists in the very best research environments. The LSRF awards fellowships across the spectrum of the life sciences.

Congratulations, Keren!


The Peter Michael Foundation Appoints Dr. Raj Kothapalli to Hamalainen Pelican Postdoctoral Fellowship

June 9, 2009
The Peter Michael Foundation is proud to announce the appointment of the Hamalainen Pelican Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University Medical Center. The Hamalainen Pelican Fellow, Dr. Raj Kothapalli, will be working in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab.

Congratulations, Raj!

Further details of this fellowship


2009 SNM Travel Award Recipients

June 8, 2009
Qizhen Cao, Gang Niu and Jin Xie, post doctoral fellows from the Molecular Imaging Probe Laboratory, along with Peter Olcott and Guillem Pratx, graduate students from the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Lab, have each received a Travel Award to attend the 56th Society of Nuclear Medicine annual meeting in Toronto, Canada from June 13 to June 17.

Congratulations, Qizhen, Gang, Jin, Peter and Guillem!


Molecular Imaging Cover

June 5, 2009
A review from the Molecular Imaging Probe Laboratory is featured on the cover of Molecular Imaging. Entitled, "Dual-Modality Probes for In Vivo Molecular Imaging", it discusses the advantages and challenges in developing dual-modality imaging probes and summarizes the current state-of-the-art systems with respects to their unique design strategies and applications.


Jeremy Pearl Awarded Second Year HHMI Fellowship

June 1, 2009
Jeremy Pearl, of the Cardiovascular Gene and Cell Therapy group, was awarded a second year fellowship to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research. Jeremy will be working along with Dr. Mark Davis in developing novel methods for inducing immunotolerance to human embryonic stem cells.

Congratulations, Jeremy!


Dr. Willmann Received Walter Friedrich Award

May 26, 2009
At the 90th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Radiology in Berlin Dr. Juergen K. Willmann was awarded the Walter Friedrich Award for outstanding research in the field of Radiology. This prize is awarded once per year in memoriam of Walter Friedrich, a 1914 German Nobel Laureate for the most innovative research in Radiology within the German Society of Radiology.

Congratulations, Dr. Willmann!


Dr. Andrei Iagaru Received the Alavi-Mandell Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine

May 18, 2009
Dr. Andrei Iagaru received the Alavi-Mandell Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine for his paper published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, "90Y-Ibritumomab Therapy in Refractory Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma: Observations from 111In-Ibritumomab Pretreatment Imaging". The award will be presented at the SNM Annual Meeting in Toronto.

Congratulations, Dr. Iagaru!


Natesh Parashurama Received ISCT Young Investigator Award

May 11, 2009
Natesh Parashurama, a postdoctoral fellow in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, received a Young Investigator Award at the the International Society for Cellular Therapy 2009 Annual Meeting for his presentation "Stably Expressed Multimodality Fusion Reporter Genes For Tracking Mesenchymal Stem Cell Status in Hearts of Living Subjects".

Congratulations, Natesh!


Zheng Miao Receives First Prize in Basic Science from Society of Nuclear Medicine

May 1, 2009
Dr. Zheng Miao, was awarded the First Prize in Basic Science for his abstract titled "A Protein Scaffold Based Molecule for EGFR PET Imaging" from the Society of Nuclear Medicine annual meeting which will be hold in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on June 14-17, 2009.

Congratulations, Dr. Miao!


Zhen Cheng Received Young Investigator Award by the Melanoma Research Alliance

April 30, 2009
Congratulations to Zhen Cheng who received Young Investigator Award by the Melanoma Research Alliance for his research "18F Labeled Benzamides for Pre-clinical PET Imaging of Melanoma Metastases".

Congratulations, Dr. Cheng!


Amelie Lutz Received the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research Scholar Award

April 28, 2009
Amelie Lutz, a Research Scientist in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, received the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research Scholar Award for her project "Early detection of ovarian cancer using targeted microbubble-enhanced ultrasound". The award is a career development award funding projects in ovarian cancer research, especially projects with translational potential over 1 year.

Congratulations, Dr. Lutz!


Dr. Shreyas Vasanawala Received the Caffey Award From Society for Pediatric Radiology

April 27, 2009
Shreyas Vasanawala and colleagues Marcus Alley, Richard Barth, Brian Hargreaves, John Pauly, Michael Lustig, received the Caffey Award for Outstanding Basic Science Paper at the Society for Pediatric Radiology Meeting in Carlsbad, California for their work on "Faster Pediatric MRI via compressed sensing".

Congratulations Dr. Vasanawala!


Journal of Nuclear Medicine's 2008 Best Basic Science Paper

April 20, 2009
The Journal of Nuclear Medicine paper from the Molecular Imaging Probe Laboratory (MIPL) titled PET/MRI dual-modality tumor imaging using arginine-glycine-aspartic (RGD)-conjugated radiolabeled iron oxide nanoparticles as selected as one of the three best basic science papers for 2008. The award will be presented at the 56th SNM Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada.


Andrew Lee Received Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship

April 17, 2009
Andrew Lee, of the Cardiovascular Gene and Cell Therapy group, was awarded a fellowship to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research. Andrew will be working with Dr. Michael Longaker in developing novel methods of reprogramming induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Congratulations, Andrew!


Kazim Narsinh Received Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship

April 13, 2009
Kazim Narsinh, of the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellowship. HHMI Research Fellowships are awarded to talented medical students from across the country in support of their careers as promising translational researchers.

Congratulations, Kazim!


MIPS Research Featured in Science

April 7, 2009
Work on Raman Molecular Imaging and Photoacoustic Molecular Imaging from the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab is covered in the journal Science in the March 6th issue in a section entitled Life Science Technologies.


Keren Ziv Received HFSP Fellowship

April 1, 2009
Keren Ziv, a Post Doctoral Fellow in the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab has been awarded a Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship (HFSP). The HFSP supports novel, innovative and interdisciplinary basic research focused on the complex mechanisms of living organisms. Long-term Fellowships provide young scientists with up to three years of postdoctoral research training in an outstanding laboratory in another country.

Congratulations, Keren!


Dr. Joseph Wu Received 2009 Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award

March 31, 2009
Dr. Joseph Wu received the 2009 Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award at the American College of Cardiology meeting. This award is to recognize a young scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field of cardiovascular medicine and who has amassed an impressive body of scientific research in either the clinical or basic domain.

Congratulations, Dr. Wu!


MIPS Research Featured in Chemical Technology

March 24, 2009
Work published in the journal Lab on a Chip on microfluidic automation of phage display is featured in Chemical Technology. This work is a collaborative effort between between the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab at Stanford and Dr. H.T. Soh's lab at UC Santa Barbara.


MIPS Research Receives Lauterbur Award

March 18, 2009
Work on faster pediatric MRI, based on compressed sensing, was awarded the Lauterbur Award for most outstanding scientific paper on MRI at the annual meeting of the SCBT/MR in Miami. The authors of the work are Shreyas S. Vasanawala, Marcus T. Alley, John M. Pauly, Garry E. Gold, Robert J. Herfkens, and Michael Lustig.


Adam de la Zerda Received SPIE 2009 Best Poster Presentation Award

January 28, 2009
Adam de la Zerda, member of the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Lab, received the Best Poster Presentation Award at SPIE Photonics West 2009 for his poster on Enhanced Sensitivity Photoacoustic Imaging Agents. Congratulation, Adam!


Research Featured in ScienceDaily

January 27, 2009
Research published in Disease Models and Mechanisms from the Molecular Biophotonics and Imaging Laboratory was featured in ScienceDaily. The research demonstrates how a sensitive imaging technique gives scientists the upper hand in seeking out bacteria in chronic infections.


Dr. Willmann Receives 2009 Research Award of the Society of Gastrointestinal Radiologists

January 9, 2009
Dr. Willmann has been awarded the Phillip H. Meyers, M.D. Annual Research Grant from the Society of Gastrointestinal Radiologists for his research entitled, "Anti-Angiogenic Treatment Assessment in Abdominal and Pelvic Cancer Using Molecular Ultrasound: First Step Towards Clinical Translation".

Congratulations, Dr. Willmann!


MIPS Research on Early Cancer Detection Featured in WIRED Magazine

Advances in Early Cancer Detection from the Multimodality Molecular Imaging Laboratory and the MIPS in conjunction with other labs and the Canary Foundation are covered in a new article in WIRED Magazine.