DEPARTMENT AWARDS

CONGRATULATIONS TO JULIA CHOI FOR BEING AWARDED FIRST PLACE IN THE RADIOPHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES COUNCIL YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD SYMPOSIUM AT THE MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF NUCLEAR MEDICINE!

Julia Choi is working with Professor Julie Sutcliffe on the non-invasive detection of molecular markers for cancer using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). She was selected to present her research at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) in Toronto during the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council Young Investigator Award Symposium. Her talk "PET imaging of activated matriptase, a marker for cancer progression" was awarded first place.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALEX REVZIN WHO HAS RECEIVED AN NSF EFRI-BSBA AWARD FOR HIS PROJECT ENTITLED:

"Novel Microsystems for Manipulation and Analysis of Immune Cells." Tingrui Pan will also be contributing to this project.

CONGRATULATIONS TO YOHEI YOKOBAYASHI WHO HAS RECEIVED AN ACADEMIC SENATE NEW INITIATIVE/COLLABORATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARY GRANT AWARD FOR 2009-2010.

CONGRATULATIONS TO TINGRUI PAN WHO HAS RECEIVED AN NSF CAREER AWARD FOR 2009-2014 FOR HIS PROJECT ENTITLED:

Lab-on-a-Chip Systems of Photopatternable Multifunctional Nanocomposite Materials for Cell Detection and Manipulation

CONGRATULATIONS TO EMILY PFEIFFER AND MELISSA FREEDENBERG FOR BEING NAMED 2009 NSF GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM AWARDEES!

Emily Pfeiffer is working with Professor Abdul Barakat in the Biofluids and Cellular Mechanics Laboratory to establish a fundamental understanding of how vascular endothelial cells respond to mechanical forces associated with blood flow. Endothelial dysfunction is essential for the development of cardiovascular pathology and is linked with specific patterns of arterial flow. This work probes a cell-level mechanical pathway that is a target for future cardiovascular disease therapy.

Melissa Freedenberg is working with Professors Simon Cherry and Alice Tarantal to non-invasively image stem cells in vivo using Positron Emission Tomography (PET). PET allows us to quantitatively and dynamically measure where injected stem cells travel throughout the body. This can help assess whether cells reach their targets or whether they travel to unintended locations, which is vital for determining the safety and efficacy of stem cell therapy. While optical tracers can achieve this in small animals, PET signals have a significant advantage for translational imaging because PET signals can penetrate through deep tissue. PET has traditionally been optimized for relatively high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) applications, but SNR is extremely low in stem cell studies due to the small amount of radiotracer used to tag the cells. In particular, Melissa is working to optimize PET for low SNR imaging. This will directly impact the quality of PET stem cell trafficking studies which will ultimately be used to monitor cellular therapies in the clinic.

CONGRATULATIONS TO KENT LEACH FOR BEING NAMED A 2008 HARTWELL FOUNDATION INDIVIDUAL BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH AWARD RECIPIENT! - Read Article
Kent Leach, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, is the first UC Davis faculty member to receive a grant from The Hartwell Foundation, an organization that supports biomedical research projects with the potential for benefiting children. Specifically, the foundation specializes in funding innovative early-stage research that has not yet qualified for support from traditional sources.

Leach won the award for "Engineered Composite Materials for Treating Premature Suture Fusion in Infants."

He will be collaborating with two colleagues at the UC Davis School of Medicine: Alice Tarantal, a professor of cell biology and human anatomy who has extensive experience in stem cell research, and Simeon Boyd, an associate professor of pediatrics, who is an internationally recognized expert on congenital anomalies of the head and face.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JINYI QI FOR WINNING THE 2009 IEEE EARLY ACHIEVEMENT AWARD!

Assoc. Prof. Jinyi Qi's was chosen as the "2009 IEEE Eary Achievement Award" receipent for the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society. He was selected for his contributions to computational nuclear medical imaging science, particularly statistically-based three-dimensional image reconstruction.

THE SCIENTIST . COM - Read Article

More than a decade ago, Simon Cherry at the University of California, Davis, began working on a small animal imaging system combining two modalities with crucial qualities: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with its excellent spatial resolution, and positron emission tomography (PET), which can track radiolabeled tracers.

It took until this year to publish a proof of principle for the technology (Proc Natl Acad Sci 105:3705-10, 2008; Nat Med 14:459-65. 2008).

Working with a prototype, researchers are addressing areas such as cancer biomarkers, and the group is building a second prototype. "We're trying to get it into the hands of users now to see what it can do and what it can't," Cherry says, and he encourages researchers with ideas for projects to get in touch.

Ultimately, he envisions a $300,000-400,000 PET add-on to an institute's existing small animal MRI system. Meanwhile, he is working on the next generation design, which will be 25 times more sensitive—a crucial feature when looking for low-abundance molecules.

WILEY: Multimodal imaging is becoming more popular because of its power. This could be a very useful development for eventual clinical use.

PISTON: We have long wanted to combine these two modalities, but the physical constraints (i.e., no metal can get inside the MRI magnet) have frustrated these efforts. The current work is revolutionary and very clever—for the first time, it is reasonable to believe that such hybrid approaches will find their way into the research and clinical labs.

CONGRATULATIONS TO SOICHIRO YAMADA FOR WINNING THE HELLMAN AWARD!

Dateline UC Davis - August 29, 2008 - Read Article

Soichiro Yamada, Junior faculty, has been chosen for the Hellman Family Foundation award.  Young faculty stars are the focus of the newly established Hellman Fellows Program. UC Davis informed 13 up-and-coming scholars earlier this month that they won grants from the Hellman Family Foundation in San Francisco. In all, UC Davis' stars collected almost $250,000. "These grants are for newer professors who show the capacity for great distinction in their research," said Bruce White, interim vice provost for academic personnel.

SIMON CHERRY RECEIVING AWARD

Professor Simon Cherry, Acting Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department, was awarded the "Distinguished Basic Scientist Award" from the Academy of Molecular Imaging (AMI). It was presented by AMI President Dr. Johannes Czernin at the 2007 Joint Molecular Imaging Conference held in Providence, Rhode Island in the opening plenary session on September 8th, 2007. Dr. Cherry delivered an invited lecture on his research in developing high resolution in vivo imaging technologies and received $7,500 in recognition of his outstanding achievements in the field of molecular imaging.


Paul Dayton selected as finalist for 2007 Academic Federation Award for Excellence in Research

Scientist Paul Dayton (http://daytonlab.bme.ucdavis.edu), an Associate Research Engineer in the Biomedical Engineering Department, was recently selected as a finalist for the 2007 Academic Federation Award for Excellence in Research. There are only three finalists chosen university-wide for this prestigious research award. Dr. Dayton is working to develop new technologies for molecular imaging with ultrasound in collaboration with Katherine Ferrara (BME) and Marjorie Longo (Chemical Engineering).

SPOTLIGHT ON FACULTY AWARDS & MILESTONES

Michael Savageau has been elected for induction into the Michigan Medical Hall of Honor. The Medical Center Alumni Society is honoring Dr. Savageau's significant contribution to the field of medicine.

Every five years the MCAS adds a select number of members to the Hall of Honor. Dr. Savageau will join a distinguished group of researchers that have been recognized as leaders in their field.

The Hall of Honor was established in 2000 in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the University of Michigan Medical School. AT that time 75 honorees were inducted and plaques for each individual are now on display in the lobby of the Towsley Center at U of M.

The induction ceremony was held at the University of Michigan on March 16, 2005. Dr. Savageau has also been invited to be the Gibbs Lecturer at the annual meeting of American Mathematical Society to be held in San Antonio, Texas on January 12-15, 2006. The Gibbs lecture was first given in 1923 and the list of past lecturers is studded with prominent names from the scientific community We congratulate Chair Savageau on these and all his remarkable accomplishments.

THE LITTLE PICTURE

Machines that can image mice are ushering in a new era for research that depends on animal models of cancer

Small-animal models of human diseases, particularly genetically engineered mice, are increasingly recognized as powerful discovery tools in cancer research. But their potential has yet to be fully realized.

One major limitation: Because imaging equipment designed for humans isn't sensitive enough for creatures as small as mice, researchers have been unable to observe the growth of a cancer, or the activity of an anti-cancer drug, in the living body of a laboratory mouse.

Enter Simon Cherry. Cherry, a professor of biomedical engineering and director of the UC Davis Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging, has scaled state-of-the-art medical imaging machines down to mouse size. He invented the first mouse PET machine while at UCLA more than a decade ago. Two years ago, he introduced the MicroPET II, now the smallest commercially available PET scanner on the market, with eight times the resolution of his first machine. Cherry has also helped to create a micro CT and micro PET-CT, and is working to develop a lowercost micro PET that would be affordable to more research laboratories around the country.

Last year, the National Cancer Institute selected Cherry out of a pool of 35 leading imaging scientists nationwide to receive a $3.4 million Small Animal Imaging Resource Program grant. Only 11 other SAIRP grants have been awarded since the program's inception; the other recipients are from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard University, Duke University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, University of Arizona, University of Pennsylvania, Washington University, Case Western Reserve University and UCLA.

The grant recognizes that UC Davis, home to what is widely regarded as the best mouse cancer pathology group in the world, is also emerging as a top center for imaging mouse models of cancer.

With Cherry's tools, scientists who work with transgenic mouse models of cancer, including mice that bear human tumors, are able to obtain unprecedented amounts of data. Researchers can follow the development of a cancer, or assess whether an experimental treatment is beneficial, in the same mouse over time. Before micro imaging became available, such information could be obtained only by sacrificing the animal.

The Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging is a 4,000-square-foot, dedicated core facility for small-animal imaging. Located in the new Genome and Biomedical Sciences Facility on the Davis campus, the center has three micro PET scanners as well as bioluminescence imaging, ultrasound, and 2-D digital fluorescence and autoradiography imaging. With SAIRP grant support, Hongjie Liang, a biomedical engineering doctoral student in Cherry's lab, recently developed a micro PET-CT scanner as well.

Positron emission tomography or PET imaging, widely used in human cancer patients, works by detecting short-lived radioactive isotopes that emit positrons. Those isotopes are typically attached to glucose, which is taken up to the greatest extent by the most metabolically active cells in the body, notably malignant tumors. On a PET scan, a cancer literally lights up. The tumor's anatomic location, however, can't be determined with precision.

That's where computerized tomography (CT) comes in. CT excels at imaging body structures and can reveal the precise location of even a small tumor. When CT and PET are married, the resulting image shows not just the precise anatomic location of an abnormal growth, but also how fast that lesion is consuming glucose. If the lesion is no hungrier than nearby cells, it is probably malignant. If it's ravenous, malignancy is likely (see Molecular Imaging).

For research that depends on mouse models of cancer and other human diseases, the micro PETCT scanner is a major advance.

"For the first time we can now measure molecular processes and their underlying anatomic location in a mouse with a single imaging instrument, thus combining the strengths of structural and functional imaging," Cherry said.

Micro imaging applications

Collaborators on the SAIRP grant include pathology professor Robert Cardiff, who directs the renowned UC Davis Mutant Mouse Pathology Laboratory, and Alexander Borowsky and Jeffrey Gregg, also members of the pathology faculty. Cardiff, Borowsky and Gregg have developed several novel mouse models of cancer, including a mouse engineered to develop ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, a precursor to breast cancer in humans.

Using Cherry's microscanners, the team is able at to non-invasively follow the natural growth of the DCIS-like lesions in mice and pinpoint their earliest transition to invasive disease. Such investigation is impossible in human patients, because the standard of care is to remove DCIS tissue.

Other SAIRP collaborators include Kit Lam, professor and chief of hematology and oncology at UC Davis Cancer Center, and Joe Tuscano, associate professor of hematology and oncology.

Lam has been screening various molecules and compounds against human cancer cells in an effort to find potential new anti-cancer compounds. He tests those that appear promising in a mouse model of that particular cancer, using Cherry's micro PET to track the compound's anti-tumor activity.

Tuscano is developing antibodies against certain cancers, including lymphoma, and also tests the drugs in mouse models, with imaging studies in the offing.

Industry interest

Outside investigators take advantage of Cherry's scanners, too. Genentech, for example, is testing various candidate compounds against mouse models of human cancer and uses Cherry's micro PET and micro PET-CT machines to assess their efficacy.

Cherry's long-term goal is to translate findings in animal models of cancer into new advances that will benefit human cancer patients. He's found that the most important advances often start with the smallest steps.

NIH ROADMAP GRANT AWARDED TO BME SCIENTIST

Paul Dayton has been awarded a NIH Roadmap grant for $1,451,200.00 to study the Development of High Resolution Probes for Cellular Imaging. His research title: ??High-Sensitivity Molecular Imaging with Ultrasound (RMI).

Recently, the development of targeted contrast agents for molecular imaging has caught the attention of the medical and scientific community. Targeted ultrasound contrast agents, microbubbles which bear adhesion ligands to specific molecular targets expressed in areas such as angiogenesis, inflammation, or thrombus have the potential to make a significant impact in the detection, assessment, and localization of pathologies otherwise undetectable with medical imaging. Because of the convenience and availability of ultrasound as an imaging technology, targeted contrast agents for use with ultrasound have the potential to rapidly transform this modality into an even more powerful clinical tool. Unfortunately, recent studies with targeted ultrasound contrast agents have failed to illustrate the sensitivity hoped for to make this technique revolutionary. In this proposal, we present a plan to increase the sensitivity of ultrasound to targeted contrast agents over an order of magnitude. Our model target for these studies is angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels), which is required for tumor growth beyond 1-2 mm in diameter. The integrin alpha(v)beta(3) is over-expressed in regions of angiogenesis, and has been shown to correlate with tumor grade. These properties make the alpha (v)beta(3) integrin an ideal target for site-directed contrast agents. This proposal describes a three-part method to achieve the desired substantial increase in sensitivity by combining a completely new contrast agent with a novel contrast agent delivery technique, and we package these improvements with the substantially improved detection strategies only possible due to the improvements in the agent and the delivery. The combined tools and experience of the Departments of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Cancer Center at the University of California, Davis, provide a unique and qualified research group for implementing this new system for molecular imaging with ultrasound.

PROF. CHERRY ACCEPTS AUSPICIOUS AWARD

Simon Cherry, Acting Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department, is the inaugural recipient of the Edward Hoffman Memorial Award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Computer and Instrumentation in Nuclear Medicine from the Computer and Instrumentation Council.  Dr. Cherry was mentored for many years by Dr. Edward Hoffman and was the unanimous choice to receive the premiere award after Dr. Hoffman's untimely death in 2004. He is being honored for his contributions in the field, particularly in small animal imaging. At the business meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine held in Toronto, Dr. Cherry accepted the award and shared some of his recollections from working with Dr. Hoffman as a postdoc fellow at UCLA. In his acceptance speech,  Dr. Cherry paid homage to his mentor and friend of 15 years saying he had instilled principles to guide researchers daily: to enjoy what we do, work with integrity, and do it with an appropriate balance of  inspiration and perspiration.

Dr. Hoffman's career spanned 30 years in the field of nuclear medicine.