2024 MIPS Molecular Imaging Seminar Series

Cell engineering focuses on applying physical and engineering principles to understand and control cell behavior, offering unlimited potential in exploring human development and enhancing our understanding of complex biological systems. Among the innovations in this field, acoustic tweezers are gaining attention as a non-contact method capable of manipulating cells in a controlled manner. This presentation will first introduce recent advancements in acoustic tweezers, emphasizing complex and arbitrary wave fields. We will also discuss some biomedical applications related to acoustic tweezers, including cell separation, sonoporation, and fusion. Notably, acoustic tweezers can activate neuronal ion channels, modulating neuronal discharges and proving to be a potent tool in brain science. Furthermore, we will delve into the theory, development, and applications of functional and super-resolution ultrasound. These technologies allow for the localization and tracking of injected microbubbles within the brain, achieving subwavelength resolution and enabling the creation of cerebral flow maps at the micron scale. Lastly, we will explore the future development prospects of high-frequency acoustic non-invasive brain-computer interfaces is prospected.

Hairong Zheng received his Ph.D degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006. He then joined the University of California, Davis, initially as a postdoctoral fellow, before becoming a project scientist in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Currently, Dr. Zheng is an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, serves as Vice President of Nanjing University, and holds the position of executive director at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research primarily focuses on medical imaging technology and instrumentation systems, with a particular emphasis on MRI and biomedical ultrasound. Dr. Zheng is the recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and has led several major scientific research projects. Additionally, he holds the position of director at the National Innovation Center for Advanced Medical Devices, is a member of the National Manufacturing Powerhouse Strategy Advisory Committee, and acts as a vice-chairman of the Chinese Society for Biomedical Engineering. For his contributions, Dr. Zheng has been honored with the National Science and Technology Progress First Class Award.

With the emergence of theranostics, development of new radiochemistry methodology and expected impact of artificial intelligence on our work, it is an exciting time to be in the field of radiochemistry and nuclear medicine. For 70 years, the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Michigan has been developing radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic molecular imaging (e.g. positron emission tomography, PET), as well as radiotherapy, and translating them for clinical care. This presentation will introduce radiopharmaceuticals, including new radiochemical methods for their production, highlight clinical and basic molecular imaging research being conducted by our division today, and cover applications of the new radiopharmaceuticals being developed and translated at our academic medical center. The presentation will conclude imagining the future impact of Artificial Intelligence on the design and synthesis of radiopharmaceuticals.

Prof. Peter Scott obtained his undergraduate degree in medicinal chemistry from Loughborough University and his PhD in organic chemistry from Durham University, both in the UK. He then moved to the US for postdoctoral research in organometallic chemistry at SUNY Buffalo, and PET radiochemistry at the University of Michigan (under Prof. Michael Kilbourn). Peter worked for Siemens Molecular Imaging for a few years after his post doc where he led radiochemistry at the Technology Center in Los Angeles. He started his independent faculty career at the University of Michigan in 2009, where he is currently a Professor of Radiology, Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacology, Chief of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the PET Center. Scott's group is involved in all aspects of Radiopharmaceutical Sciences including i) developing new methods for radiolabeling bioactive molecules, ii) designing and translating new radiotracers for PET imaging, iii) cGMP radiopharmaceutical manufacture and iv) adapting new technology (e.g. artificial intelligence) to imagine the radiochemistry laboratory of the future. Peter has published over 180 papers and 30 book chapters, about 250 conference abstracts and edited 5 books. He has received numerous awards for his research including, most recently, the 2023 Sam Gambhir Trailblazer Award from SNMMI, and is listed as an inventor on multiple patents. His laboratory is funded by the National Institutes of Health, and has multiple collaborations with academic institutions, biotech and pharma companies all over the world.

Ms. Bodapati speaks on the Athelas journey from diagnostics start-up to unicorn status and merger with Commure to create a $6B healthcare infrastructure company  using software, sensors, and artificial intelligence.

Deepika Bodapati (COO, Athelas/Commure) is a research scientist with a background in molecular imaging at Stanford University. In her sophomore year, Ms. Bodapati teamed up with her childhood friend, Tanay Tandon, who specialized in machine learning at Stanford, to co-found Athelas, which has developed an FDA-cleared device that helps simplify and enhance the blood monitoring processes for immunosuppressed patients. At Athelas, Ms. Bodapati and Mr. Tandon raised $132M from Sequoia, General Catalyst, YCombinator, and NVIDIA, while helping to build the company’s core healthcare platform for workflow automation, revenue cycle, and remote diagnostics. It is currently valued at $1.5B.

Invasive fungal diseases, caused by pathogens such as Aspergillus fumigatus, are common life-threatening infections in immunocompromised patients and effective treatment is often hampered by delays in timely and specific diagnosis. Fungal-specific molecular imaging tracers can potentially provide non-invasive in vivo readouts of deep-seated fungal pathologies allowing for early diagnosis and the ability to assess treatment response longitudinally. In this presentation, advances in developing and validating fungal-specific positron emission tomography (PET) ligands which capitalize on the unique sugar metabolism of fungi will be discussed. Another approach of targeting fungal-specific cell wall components with radiolabeled antibodies and antibody fragments will also be reviewed. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of future potential molecular imaging applications in the field.

Dr. Dima A. Hammoud is a tenured Senior Investigator in Radiology and Imaging Sciences (NIH-CC) at the Intramural Research Program at NIH. Her research interests include the development of preclinical, translational and clinical molecular imaging tracers to improve the understanding of the pathophysiology of infection and provide reliable imaging biomarkers of infectious diseases. Current research in her laboratory focuses on the development and validation of novel fungal-specific imaging biomarkers in animal models of infection using non-invasive molecular imaging techniques, mainly positron emission tomography (PET), which can then be translated to human applications. Another interest of the lab is utilizing PET imaging to better understand the pathophysiology of HIV in the brain and periphery and to identify  HIV reservoirs.

Dr Hammoud is board-certified in diagnostic imaging and has completed fellowships in neuroradiology and PET imaging. She is a practicing neuroradiologist at the NIH-CC. Currently, she serves as deputy director of the Center for Infectious Disease Imaging (CIDI), a joint initiative between the NIH-CC and NIAID, Chair of the "Imaging of Infections” (IOI) interest group at the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS), Chair of the animal care and use committee (ACUC) at the NIH-CC, a committee member of the intramural PET Steering Committee at NIH and since 2021, as a member of the scientific program committee of the World Molecular imaging Congress (WMIC).

Failure to fully understand the molecular expression and tumor heterogeneity across a patient’s tumor can lead to administration of ineffective therapies that increase patient morbidity and healthcare costs. The -omics era has made it possible to identify several new molecular markers involved in cancer development, survival, invasion and even predicting treatment response. We currently lack an easy way to obtain high content molecular information while providing high resolution spatial profiling across a patient’s tumor. We are developing an entirely new nano-based molecular imaging strategy that has the potential to offer both high content molecular expression and spatial profiling in a single histology image. We have created an expansive library of 26 SERS nanoparticle (NP) batches, each bearing a unique spectral fingerprint with exceptional multiplexing capabilities. Spectral deconvolution was successfully demonstrated with a mixture of all 26 SERS NPs in a single imaging pixel both in vitro and in vivo. We have also demonstrated their potential to specifically target various biomarkers in the hope of gaining a better understanding of the spatial relationships that exist between a multitude of cell types using Raman imaging. This opens new opportunities to efficiently interrogate the heterogeneous molecular expression found within and across patient tissues. Incorporating it into the pathology workflow could offer physicians a better understanding of the patient’s tumor type and stratify patients to receive the most effective therapeutic regimen. This unique tissue histology imaging strategy also has the potential to identify new molecular trends across patients that could either be used by pharmaceutical companies to enable better drug discovery or by clinicians to predict how well their patients are likely to respond to given therapies. These results are an important step toward the translation of this new nano-based multiplexed Raman imaging approach; to provide rapid spatial molecular profiling of a given tumor while enabling a more effective personalized therapy to the patient.

Dr. Zavaleta was born and raised in McAllen, Texas, a small town on the border with Mexico.  She received her Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Medicine at the University of Incarnate Word, a small private university in San Antonio. After graduating, she started in the Medical Physics graduate program at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio where she focused on utilizing radioactive nanoparticles for the treatment of ovarian cancer. After receiving her Ph.D., she began a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, under the guidance of Dr. Sam Gambhir, where she dedicated the majority of her time developing a new Raman imaging strategy for cancer detection. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in the department of Biomedical Engineering. Her lab focuses on providing physicians with better molecular imaging tools to improve cancer detection using novel nano-based approaches.

Many chronic and acute diseases have a fibroproliferative component.  Our lab has focused on developing molecular imaging probes to specifically quantify tissue fibrosis and fibrogenesis and apply these to questions of early detection, quantitative staging, prognosis, treatment prediction and treatment monitoring.  Here I will describe some recent applications of our work in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, chronic liver disease, chronic kidney disease, and pancreatic cancer in animal models and in clinical studies.  I will also describe our efforts in using PET-MRI to capture multiple molecular readouts in a single imaging session to better characterize pathology.

Peter Caravan is the Co-Director of the Institute for Innovation in Imaging (i3) at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School.  He leads a multidisciplinary and translational molecular imaging lab focused on the invention of novel molecular probes and their broad applications in cardiovascular, pulmonary, renal, and hepatic diseases as well as in cancers.  His research spans novel chemistry technologies to advanced MRI and PET imaging in animal models through to applications in patient populations. Dr Caravan received his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of British Columbia.  Following post-doctoral work at the Université de Lausanne, he worked in industry developing targeted MR probes. He joined Massachusetts General Hospital in 2007 and has been a continuously funded NIH researcher since 2009. Dr. Caravan has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, is a named inventor on over 25 issued patents, has brought multiple PET and MRI probes to first-in-human studies, and has co-founded two companies.