Faculty News
University of Michigan: a Partner in the Network for Translational Research (ntr)
NIH has selected the University of Michigan to become a Center in the Network for Translational Research (NTR): Optical Imaging in Multimodal Platforms. This Center consists of the Mayo Clinic, Stanford University, and the University of Washington as academic members. In addition, Olympus Medical Systems Corp and STI Medical Systems are industrial partners. The NTR has 3 other Centers, including Washington University at St Louis, University of Texas, and Stanford University. The 4 Centers form an international network that shares institutional resources to develop translational research programs for advancing innovative methods of multi-modality molecular imaging. The mission of the NTR is to develop consensus processes for optimization of novel optical imaging methods and to provide an informatics infrastructure to support multi-center validation.
The University of Michigan NTR team is led by Thomas D. Wang, MD,PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering. This Center is developing affinity peptides as molecular probes to identify over-expressed cell surface targets on the mucosa in the digestive tract. These peptides will then be either radio- or fluorescent-labeled, and used to localize the presence of pre-cancerous tissue using a multi-modal imaging platform that includes PET/SPECT, wide area endoscopy, and confocal microscopy. The ability to target subtle molecular rather than gross architectural changes in tissue represents a new paradigm for the early detection of cancer. The focus of the Michigan NTR Center is to advance a multi-modal molecular imaging platform to improve screening and surveillance methods for detection of cancer in the esophagus and colon.
The Michigan NTR Center represents a dynamic collaboration between the School of Medicine and the College of Engineering in an effort to integrate molecular biology with optical imaging. Eric Fearon, MD,PhD (Pathology), Brian Ross, PhD (Radiology), and Alwanaz Rehemtulla (Radiation Oncology) lead the core resources from Medicine, while Katsuo Kurabayashi, PhD, Albert Shih, PhD, and Kenn Oldham, PhD head technology development from Engineering. More information about the Michigan NTR Center can be found at http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ntr.
Posted on December 18, 2008, 11:04 am