NOVEMBER 2003

Europeans scale up MI effort

Sizable programs emerge at key universities

By: Paula Gould

Radiology needs to think big, spend generously, and make friends in influential places if it is to retain its central role in the molecular imaging revolution. Translation of molecular imaging research into clinical applications will require substantial investment in specialized equipment, expert staffing, and multidisciplinary research programs, according to speakers at the August meeting of the International Society of Strategic Studies in Radiology.

The journey from discovery to clinical application of molecular imaging methods is long and slow, but the proliferation of well-focused, cross-disciplinary research centers will help accelerate the process, said Prof. Denis Le Bihan, director of the Anatomical and Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Service Hospitalier Frederic Joliot in Orsay, France.

Plans are under way to establish a large neuroimaging research center near Paris. The NeuroSpin center, to be built on the French atomic energy commission (CEA) research campus at Saclay, will house four ultra-high-field MR units suitable for human and animal studies. The high-end scanners are expected to yield images with sufficient spatial resolution to study neurons and neuronal connections directly. It is hoped that this new MRI data will aid the prevention and treatment of neurological diseases caused by genetic or acquired abnormalities during brain development.

"There is a missing link between our understanding of the brain at the cellular level and at the macroscopic level," Le Bihan said. "There is a great potential for imaging, especially MRI, to bridge the gap between these two scales."

ULTRAHIGH-FIELD MRI

Construction of NeuroSpin will begin in 2004, with completion scheduled for 2006. Project administrators have not yet awarded contracts for the ultrahigh-field scanners. Current plans include installation of 3T and 11.7T MR systems for human clinical trials, another 11.7T unit for primate studies, and a 17T MR scanner for rodent studies.

NeuroSpin will employ about 150 full-time researchers, clinicians, biologists, engineers, and technicians. The facility will also be open to scientists from other institutions, who will be encouraged to book time slots on the scanners. The concept of buying time on centrally located large instruments is already common practice in physics, where researchers apply for slots on particle accelerators or telescopes, Le Bihan said.

"We see this as an open facility for research. Researchers from many parts of the world would come for weeks or even months to pursue their own projects here," he said.

FIRST-CLASS PERSONNEL

The equation between molecular imaging progress and capital investment in resources is also recognized in the U.S. Here, however, radiology researchers are observing the emergence of sizable molecular imaging programs at a few key universities, rather than at shared facilities. These university-based programs are attracting first-class personnel and sizable research grants from the National Institutes of Health, leaving less well endowed departments trailing in their wake.

Smaller academic radiology departments can make valuable contributions to molecular imaging research, but they will miss out on opportunities to translate that work into the clinical arena, said Prof. Gary Glazer, chair of radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Instituting large-scale research programs is expensive, and the investment must be carefully planned.

"We started small at Stanford, and we stayed small for about eight years," Glazer said. "The reason was simple: We did not have the space within our university environment to mount a major program. It was not worth investing in the resources at a time when we were not going to be competitive."

The university has decided that now is the time to make that investment and is building a dedicated molecular imaging research facility on campus. The $8.4 million building, due to open in 2005, will occupy 20,000 square feet of floor space and house 80 staff members from a variety of scientific disciplines.

Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, the director of Stanford's molecular imaging program (http://mips.stanford.edu) and head of nuclear medicine, believes that large-scale, interdisciplinary research and collaboration with pharmaceutical companies will be essential to the realization of clinically relevant molecular imaging probes. Targeted delivery of MR contrast agents, radioisotopes for PET scanning, and bioluminescent reporter genes, for example, can help researchers monitor drug therapy at a cellular level or may even form part of the treatment itself. But academic departments may lack the facilities to exploit their basic research findings.

"Collaborative consortia involving universities and industry will be needed to translate this research into the clinical arena," Gambhir said. "We need to bring these molecular probes into an environment where we can do cell cultures and animal testing using all the different imaging technologies. Ask yourself: How many drugs are developed in universities right now? The answer is none."