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Advance Innovation Through Imaging

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the Translational Technologies & Resources (TTR) program received supplemental funding to advance innovation through imaging. The overarching goal of the supplement is to extend the program's depth of support for interdisciplinary work by providing key shared and common platform resources in order to remove barriers to rapid translation of promising scientific developments from animal models to human trials.

More specifically, the supplement aims to advance coordination among small animal, non-human primate, and human imaging studies utilizing the resources of the Emory Center for Systems Imaging (CSI) and Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Yerkes) Imaging Center.

The goal was addressed through four key initiatives:

1) Integrating capabilities across CSI and Yerkes to optimize translational-directed biomedical imaging research. In November 2009, two TRACERLab FX MeI (GE Healthcare) units were purchased to permit uniform efficient production of ¹¹C-labeled PET tracers at both sites and expansion of the PET tracer development program overall. Specific uses include the development of a norepinephrine (NET) tracer

2) IT working group to map out systems architecture required for shared data storage capabilities across the imaging sites; high-performance compute cluster and disk storage was installed and is operational; this will enable analysis across imaging programs through a shared imaging informatics infrastructure. Also work began on a common database to track and manage images

3) Pilot funds for translational-directed (animal to human) studies ($50,000 per award) for novel biomarker imaging research in animal models or human translation from animal models. Two annual awards were funded, one beginning in June 2010 and one beginning in September 2010:

Awardees

Anthony W.S. Chan, DVM, PhD (Yerkes National Primate Research Center), Hui Mao, PhD (Emory University, Department of Radiology), and Xiaodong Zhang, PhD (Yerkes National Primate Research Center); Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Approach for Evaluating Therapeutic Impact of shRNA in Huntington's Disease

John N. Oshinski, PhD (Emory University, Department of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering), Aloke Finn, MD (Emory University, Department of Medicine, Cardiology), and Hui Mao, PhD (Emory University, Department of Radiology); A dual-labeled magnetic-optical imaging probe for M2 macrophages

Leonard Howell, PhD (Yerkes National Primate Research Center), John Votaw, PhD (Emory University, Department of Radiology), and Shella Keilholz, PhD (Emory University, Department of Biomedical Engineering); Resting State and Cue-Induced Functional Brain Activity Following Cocaine Use and Extinction Therapy in Nonhuman Primates

4) Molecular imaging fellowship, with partial support from the Emory Department of Radiology & Imaging Sciences (Shengyoung Wu, MD, PhD began work as a molecular imaging fellow in August 2010 under the supervision of B. Fei.)