New Views of Cancer

The Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer
Center recently received two major grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to support cancer imaging research.

In 2008, the NCI awarded $7.5 million for the establishment of the Vanderbilt “In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center” (ICMIC). Research supported by the grant will focus on developing
sensitive new imaging probes and assessing how specific in vivo molecular signal transduction pathways and changes in these pathways are modified by cancer and cancer therapy. A special focus of the program will be to develop innovative imaging biomarkers that can be used to predict and measure whether patients respond to specific treatments.

VUIIS and Vanderbilt-Ingram also received a five-year, $2.2 million grant to apply new non-invasive imaging techniques for studying cancer in small laboratory animals. The funding helps establish the “South-Eastern Center for Imaging Animal Models of Cancer.” Vanderbilt will collaborate with 12 other centers in the NCI's Small Animal Imaging Resource Program.

Photo: Multispectral fluorescence imaging in mice helps investigators study how breast cancer cells (red) metastasize to bone. image provided by H. Charles Manning, Ph.D., VUIIS