News
October 2021: James lab win awards at WMIC
The James lab won several awards at the World Molecular Imaging Congress! Dr. Chaney was awarded the second place Young Investigator Award, and Aisling, Carmen, Mackenzie, and Samantha were all awarded WIMIN scholar awards and student travel awards! They all gave fantastic oral presentations! WIMIN Scholar Awards are presented to members of the World Molecular Imaging Society who are presenters of meritorious scientific papers at WMIC Annual Meetings. In addition, Isaac presented two awesome posters at the conference and Poorva joined to present work she's continued with our lab. Dr. Israt Alam had the second highest scoring abstract describing her work on ICOS PET imaging performed in the Gambhir lab. Well done everyone!!
June 2021: Mackenzie received Centennial Teaching Assistant Award
Mackenzie is one of the 2021 School of Engineering winners awarded for being an outstanding TA for the course BIOE/RAD 224: Probes and Applications for Multi-modality Molecular Imaging of Living Subjects. The annual Centennial Teaching Assistant Awards recognizes outstanding teaching assistants for their tremendous service and dedication in providing excellent classroom instruction for Stanford students. Congratulations, Mackenzie! We're glad you're a part of the molecular imaging community and we know the students are too!
March 2021: Sydney awarded summer research fellowship
Undergraduate intern Sydney Nagy will join the lab full-time this summer thanks to a research fellowship! The Human Biology Research Exploration (HB-REX) program is an opportunity for declared Human Biology majors to work in research groups with experienced mentors during the summer following their sophomore year. HB-REX is specifically for sophomores who have taken the Human Biology Core course. Interns receive a stipend and are required to work full-time for 10 weeks. All HB-REX interns present their research in a poster symposium in August, attended by faculty mentors and other students. Congrats Sydney!
March 2021: Carmen received CMIIT Laboratory Professionals Award
Ms. Azevedo received the Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation Laboratory Professionals Award from the Society for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. This award is designed to recognize laboratory professionals who have made a significant contribution to molecular imaging and therapy while working in the laboratory of a principal investigator. Its purpose is to promote the innovative efforts and exemplary accomplishments by individuals in the lab who may not have the opportunity to receive recognition in other arenas. Carmen will be recongnized during the CMIIT Board and Business Meeting at the SNMMI Annual Meeting June 2021. Congrats Carmen!
February 2021: Dr. Chaney received NIH K99/R00 award
Dr. Aisling Chaney was awarded a NIH Pathway to Independence (K99/R00) award to investigate immune activation in Alzheimer’s disease using PET imaging. This award provides independent NIH research support to facilitate a timely transition of outstanding postdoctoral researchers to independent, tenure-track or equivalent faculty positions. We are immensely proud of this accomplishment and look forward to seeing where Aisling will continue her research! Congratulations Dr. Chaney!
January 2021: Dr. James awarded R21 grant
Dr. James was fortunate to receive an R21 in January 2021 from NIH/NINDS to quantify innate immune activation in the whole body and CNS of Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients using PET/MRI.
January 2021: Michelle joins WMIS Board of Trustees
Dr. James was elected by members to join the World Molecular Imaging Society Board of Trustees for a three year term. She is co-chair of the 2021 congress as well. Congratulations Michelle!
October 2020: Katie and Aisling received WIMIN Scholar Awards at WMIC
WIMIN Scholar Awards are presented to members of the World Molecular Imaging Society who are presenters of meritorious scientific papers at WMIC Annual Meetings. They both gave excellent oral presentations: Aisling's titled "TREM-1 PET detects maladaptive innate immune responses associated with active disease in a mouse model of relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis" at the Preclinical Imaging of Neurological Diseases Session session and Katie's titled "Seeing is not always believing" at the Radiology to Pathology workshop. And Carmen gave her first oral presentation at a conference! Congratulations Aisling, Katie, and Carmen!
July 2020: Dr. James awarded R01 grant
Dr. James was awarded her first R01 in July 2020 from NIH/NINDS on “Imaging B cells in the brain and beyond: developing an immuno-PET toolbox to improve understanding and treatment of multiple sclerosis”. The goal is to develop several B cell PET tracers to better understand, predict and monitor response to MS therapies.
July 2020: Katie earned 3rd place in Young Investigator Award Symposium at SNNMI
Dr. Katie Lucot presented "Visualizing innate immune activation in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease using a highly specific TREM1-PET tracer" for the Brain Imaging talks Young Investigator Award Symposium at SNMMI and earned 3rd place! The pool was competitive with mostly clinical research and Katie's presentation was outstanding. Congratulations Katie!
July 2020: Poorva departed the lab for MD/PhD program in Miami
Congratulations to Poorva for starting the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Miami! While we already miss Poorva dearly, we're incredibly proud of her contributions to our lab, and we can't wait to see what else she achieves! Poorva plans to continue research in neuroscience and imaging, with an emphasis on accessibility.
April 2020: Aisling received the Alavi-Mandell Award from SNMMI
Dr. Aisling Chaney was awarded the Alavi–Mandell Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging for her first author paper in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine entitled, "[11C]DPA-713 Versus [18F]GE-180: A Preclinical Comparison of Translocator Protein 18 kDa PET Tracers to Visualize Acute and Chronic Neuroinflammation in a Mouse Model of Ischemic Stroke”.
The Alavi-Mandell Award recognizes outstanding contributions to the field from young scientists, fellows, or physician residents who have published (as first authors) excellent original articles in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
February 2020: Dr. James visits Vienna to consult at the IAEA
Dr. James was invited to a radiochemistry consultancy meeting at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. She had a blast brainstorming with Prof. Peter Scott (U Mich), Prof. Neil Vasdev (U ofT oronto), Prof. Tony Gee (Kings College London), and Prof. Matthias Herth (University of Copenhagen) about possible future directions of radiochem and molecular imaging for neuroscience applications. Stay tuned for a publication summarizing the outcomes of this meeting soon.
She also really enjoyed going to the Opera and sampling all the delicious Weiner schnitzels!
February 2020: Mackenzie received travel award for ISMRM
Mackenzie Carlson earned a travel award to bring her abstract to the International Society for Molecular Resonance in Medicine Conference this summer. Congrats Mackenzie!
January 2020: Dr. Chaney selected for the CECI2
Aisling was selected to be on the 2020 and 2021 Council of Early Career Investigator in Imaging (CECI2) by the Academy of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research. The Academy established the CECI2 to create advocacy efforts and provide opportunities to develop connections with the NIH and Congressional offices. As a part of this council, Aisling will connect with other early career leaders in imaging and have the opportunity to meet with members of Congress and congressional staff, NIH program staff, and patient advocacy leaders interested in radiology research and supporting needs for the imaging sciences. Next year she will also get the opportunity to travel to Washington DC to present her research at the annual Medical Imaging Technology Showcase on Capitol Hill.
Fall 2019: Isaac honored with Gradute Fellowship from ChemH
Congratulations to Isaac for being named an O’Leary-Thiry Graduate Fellow as part of the Chemistry Biology Interface Program at ChemH. Through seminars, career development activities, and an annual retreat, the program brings together graduate students from the humanities and sciences, engineering, and medicine and provides further interdisciplinary training to enable these students to work and communicate across disciplines, and bring together these disciplines with new innovations. Read more here.
December 2019: Stanford undergrad student joins the lab
We're excited to welcome Sydney to our lab! Sydney will be working with Aisling to learn about image analysis and she is especially excited to learn how to visualize and track neurodegenerative diseases. She plans to study Human Biology with a concentration in neuroscience. In her spare time, Sydney practices aerial and contortion, loves cycling around this lovely area, repairing bikes, and working on environmental sustainability initiatives!
September 2019: Haley's paper in collaboration with Tawfik lab published
Over our shared passion to better understand and treat chronic pain, we teamed up with the Tawfik lab for this fruitful collaboration. The paper highlights how whole body PET can be used to understand the dynamic processes of inflammation in chronic pain. Read it here.
September 2019: GE Headquarters visit
Michelle and Mackenzie visited GE Headquarters in Milwaukee, WI for the semiannual Stanford research users meeting. Mackenzie gave three talks: on tau PET/MR, on Hobbit View on the 7T MR, and on motion correction for the PET/MR. Michelle gave a talk about TSPO-PET. They both had a great time touring the facilities and meeting the folks at GE!
September 2019: Dr. Chaney received the Young Investigator Award at WMIC
Aisling was awarded the Young Investigator Award at WMIC in Montreal for her talk titled "Tracking the invaders in MS: a new highly specific PET imaging approach for visualizing peripheral innate immune activation with higher sensitivity than TSPO-PET." She also earned a travel award and a WIMIN scholar award. Congratulations Aisling!
July 2019: Poorva awarded MOMIL grant for WMIC 2019
Our lab manager and research assistant Poorva Jain was awarded a registration grant for managers of molecular imaging labs (MOMIL) to attend WMIC in early September 2019 in Montreal. We're excited to attend with her! Congrats, Poorva!
June 2019: Marc awarded first place in young investigator symposium
Dr. Marc Stevens was awarded First Place in the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Young Investigator Symposium at SNMMI 2019 for his talk entitled: "Radiolabeling and pre-clinical evaluation of a first-in-class CD19 PET Tracer for imaging B cells in multiple sclerosis". Congrats, Marc!
June 2019: Dr. James recognized for outstanding teaching
Dr. Michelle James was awarded the “Basic Science Teacher of the Year award” at the Radiology Graduation dinner. This award is given each year in recognition of outstanding contributions to education in Radiology. The students in BioE224 nominated Michelle for her passion and excellence in teaching.
Congratulations Dr. James!
April 2019: Professor James' B cell paper wins an award
Professor James was awarded the Alavi-Mandell Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging for her paper “Imaging B cells in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis using 64Cu-Rituximab-PET." Congrats, Michelle!
January 2019: Marc wins the 2019 Molecular Imaging Young Investigator (MIYI) prize
Among the highly competitive group of proposals that were submitted to the MIPS MIYI Review Committee, Marc was awarded the 2019 MIYI prize. We are excited about this innovative proposal, entitled "Imaging the Gut-Brain Superhighway: Development of a PET Tracer Targeting Peripheral Alpha-Synuclein in Rodent Models of Parkinson’s Disease."
Congratulations, Marc, on this exciting project!
January 2019: BioE224 class begins
Professor James is co-directing the BioEngineering course 224 with Professor Michael Moseley and Dr. Israt Alam, “Probes and Applications for Multi-Modality Molecular Imaging of Living Subjects”. Class began on January 8th and is held every Tuesday and Thursday. Emphasis this year will be on state-of-the-art strategies for early detection of Alzheimer's disease, imaging response to cutting-edge cancer immunotherapies, and how “Deep Learning” can be used for high-throughput automated image analysis and reducing radiation dose for PET imaging. There will also be a guest appearance from a successful Silicon Valley VC to teach the class how to give a killer pitch! Please email Prof James if you are interested in enrolling or auditing this class.
December 2018: Professor James receives NIH funding from NINDS
We are delighted to announce that Professor James received an R21 grant for her project titled, "Tracking the invaders in multiple sclerosis: Highly specific PET imaging biomarker of toxic infiltrating myeloid cells and early treatment response".
November 2018: Poorva joins the lab
The James lab warmly welcomes a new research assistant, Poorva, into the lab! Poorva is a recent graduate from Washington University in St. Louis and will assist in biomarker validation studies, specifically using qPCR and immunohistochemical staining.
October 2018: Professor James Kenote Talk at OSU
Professor James was the Keynote speaker for Annual Research Symposium at OSU, where she shared her insights into getting the most out of your postdoc and considerations when transitioning to faculty.
October 2018: Kelly visits the lab for stroke/LPS study
We were excited to host Kelly Henry from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center for a second, 5-week visit! Kelly was extremely productive in completing several studies involving acidosis in stroke and sepsis models.
October 2018: Haley wins poster award at the MIPS poster session in Monterey, CA
At the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) poster session in Monterey, Haley’s poster on her most recent research was awarded 3rd place! Congrats Haley!!
October 2018: Stanford Neuroscience Institute Symposium
Haley presented her poster on imaging chronic pain at the 2018 SNI symposium at Stanford!
September 2018: WMIC in Seattle
The James Lab traveled to Seattle for the 2018 World Molecular Imaging Congress. Here, Haley presented a poster on imaging myeloid cell activation in chronic pain. Following the poster session, Professor James and Professor Biswal won second place at the first ever WMIC Shark Tank competition! We enjoyed sharing our work and learning about the latest research from our peers in the field of molecular imaging.
August 2018: Aisling and Haley present at the 2018 Stanford BioX symposium
Aisling and Haley presented posters at the 2018 BioX Symposium at Stanford University. They both enjoyed sharing their interdisciplinary research with the Stanford community!
August 2018: Katie joins the lab!
Upon receiving her PhD at UC Davis, Dr. Katie Lucot joined Stanford as a postdoctoral fellow in Pathology department, under the guidance of Professor Thomas Montine. We are excited to work closely with Katie and Tom on multiple Parkinson’s Disease projects!
July 2018: James Lab summer BBQ
We very much enjoyed soaking in the California summer with our lab and collaborators :)
June 2018: JoVE video is published!
Make sure to check out the Journal of Visualized Experiments for our video on how to perform dynamic TSPO-PET imaging in a mouse model of ischemic stroke!
Dynamic TSPO-PET imaging in JoVE
May 2018: Aisling receives the SNMMI-ERF Postdoctoral Molecular Imaging Research Scholar Grant
Dr. Aisling Chaney was awarded an SNMMII grant for her project on imaging pro-inflammatory myeloid cells in rodent models of multiple sclerosis. Congrats, Aisling!!
March 2018: Kelly visits the lab
We were honored to host a visiting postdoc from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Kelly Henry, for a productive 8 weeks. Here, Kelly used her novel PET probe to image acidosis in sepsis.
February 2018: FSPG-PET paper is published!
Our paper on imaging oxidative stress in a mouse model of Multiple Sclerosis was published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation! See the following link to read about our findings.
January 2018: Isaac joins the lab
Welcome Isaac Jackson! After rotating in our lab, we are very happy to announce that Isaac decided to join the James Lab for the PhD component of his MD/PhD dual degree through the Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Stanford.
February 2018: JoVE Filming
We had the pleasure of filming the methods of our publication PET Imaging of Neuroinflammation using [11C]DPA-713 in a mouse model of Ischemic Stroke in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE). Stay tuned for the published video!
January 2018: BioE 224 Winter Quarter Class Begins!
Probes and Applications for Multi-modality Molecular Imaging of Living Subjects
BioEngineering 224/Radiology 224
Dr. James is co-directing a BioEngineering class (BIOE224), which began on January 9th for the winter quarter! This class focuses on design, development, and application of imaging agents that target specific cellular and molecular aspects of disease. It covers the strengths and limitations of different imaging agents and how to optimize their design for image-guided intra-operative procedures, brain imaging, probing infection, or interrogating tumor metabolism. Emphasis this year will be on clinical molecular imaging, state-of-the-art strategies for early detection of dementia, imaging response to cancer immunotherapy, and how “Deep Learning” can be used for probe design and high-throughput automated image analysis.
December 2017: Happy Holidays!
James Lab and Mormino Lab 2017 Holiday Celebration
Celebrating 2017 with a [11C] DPA-713 cake and the Mormino Lab at Stanford University, we are thankful for all the support and opportunities we received this year. We cannot wait to see what 2018 has in store!
November 2017: First Stroke Patient Imaged with DPA-713
The first patient was imaged with [11C]DPA-713 at Stanford using PET/MR in November of 2017. We are excited to see how this tracer will help us answer questions about chronic neuroinflammation post-stroke.
September 2017: WMIC Posters, Talks, and Awards
We journeyed across the country to Philadelphia, PA for the World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC). Here, Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Aisling Chaney, and Research Assistant, Emily Johnson, presented our latest research through a featured talk and two posters. Aisling’s captivating poster illustrated the first head-to-head comparison of second generation TSPO-PET tracers in ischemic stroke. After her featured talk, Emily’s poster on the first myeloid cell specific PET tracer in LPS earned the Best Poster Award in the "Imaging Inflammation and Infection" track (in addition to her Student Travel Stipend). Well done Aisling and Emily!!