Imaging Scientist Earns New NIH Grant for Innovative
Research
By Gary Stephenson Johns Hopkins
Medicine
Jeff W.M. Bulte, professor of radiology,
biomedical
engineering and
chemical and biomolecular
engineering in the Russell H. Morgan Department of
Radiology and Radiological Science in the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine, is one of 38 U.S. scientists to
win one of the National Institutes of
Health's new EUREKA (for Exceptional, Unconventional
Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration)
grants.
According to the NIH, EUREKA grants are provided to
fund "exceptionally innovative research
projects that could have extraordinarily significant impact
on many areas of science."
Bulte's award, from the National Institute on Drug
Abuse, is for $200,000 per year for four
years and will be used to develop a new method, called
magnetic particle imaging, of visualizing
transplanted stem cells in the brains of animals with
stroke.
Like conventional magnetic resonance imaging, MPI uses
strong magnetic fields to produce
images. Unlike MRI, which produces images of tissue in
response to the magnetic fields, the MPI
technique visualizes the magnetic particles loaded onto
cells injected into the body. The result is an
image that is far more sensitive than MRI and one that can
count the actual number of cells, becoming
a direct rather than indirect magnetic tracer that can see
"hot spots" without confounding
"background noise."
"There is little question the field of cellular
therapeutics will ultimately become very important
in treating or possibly curing many neurodegenerative
diseases," Bulte said. "In order for us to make
this a reality, we need noninvasive methods for tracking
where these cells actually go within the body
and the mechanisms of that homing and migration."
In his work, Bulte, who serves as the director of the
Cellular Imaging Section in the Johns
Hopkins Institute for
Cell Engineering, loads superparamagnetic tracers onto
neural and mesenchymal
cells and then injects them into experimental animals. "If
this new imaging technique is developed
sufficiently and successfully, it will help us understand
much better where the cells exactly go into
the brain and elsewhere in the body, and eventually
facilitate the use of stem cells to cure or treat
diseases."
GO TO SEPTEMBER 15,
2008
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
GO TO THE GAZETTE
FRONT PAGE.
|