Description (from grant):
Significance: The goal of the Resource for Molecular Imaging Agents in Precision Medicine is to provide new, precision materials, to test these pre-clinically and progress them to human use, delivered on-site or to our collaborators in a format suitable for their implementation. While focusing on the biological theme of relationships between cancer, inflammation and immunity, we will be nimble and flexible, developing a wide variety of small molecules and macromolecular agents in collaboration with other academic centers and industry worldwide.
The Resource for Molecular Imaging Agents in Precision Medicine is a transdisciplinary consortium of facilities and expertise centered at Johns Hopkins University. Participants are the Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, the F. M. Kirby Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering, with key industrial collaborators in biomedical imaging and pharmaceuticals to ensure widespread dissemination. Our work will synthesize, develop, and deploy precision imaging tools and theranostic agents for early detection, interception, and cure. The long-term objective of the NCBIB is to promote the translation and dissemination of new molecular imaging and theranostic agents and their attendant best practices along the spectrum of cancer, inflammation and immunity. Our proposed work capitalizes on advances made in the past five years in artificial intelligence (AI), new and more sensitive translational imaging devices, nanotechnology, gene manipulation, and new techniques to produce specific molecular affinity agents and will create a scientific ecosystem that can transform the healthcare landscape. Collaborative academic centers such as ours, while steeped in the culture of fundamental discovery, are beginning to pivot toward the development of new work products – working backwards from unmet needs – in the context of increasing academic-industrial partnerships and entrepreneurship. Working closely with our partners, we will leverage these advances in scientific and academic cultural thinking, and provide new materials to our collaborating and service partners, some of whom have worldwide reach, to address pressing and unsolved medical challenges. During the first funding period we consolidated our ability to work together seamlessly as a NCBIB; in this renewal, we have added collaboration with a new local NCBIB that complements our work by providing biological reagents relevant to immunoengineering, offering AI capability, founding one company dedicated to advancing use of AI in molecular imaging and another company for commercialization of imaging and theranostic agents, received FDA approval for an imaging agent (analogs of which are already in use in the NCBIB), and providing precursors, other reagents and IND cross-references to multiple institutions. Our goals for the renewal period are, across four TR&Ds, to develop: new reagents to detect and promote an immune reactive tumor microenvironment (TR&D1); an integrated nanoplatform to manage a variety of cancers (TR&D2); translational imaging agents, theranostics, and software for managing inflammation and/or cancer in the periphery or central nervous system (TR&D3); and a method to use extracellular vesicles as a nanotheranostic platform in neuroinflammation (TR&D4). Together with the Collaborating and Service Projects (CPs and SPs) we will generate next-generation precision platforms, tools, and techniques for tackling problems at the forefront of biomedical research with a focus on those that will lead to near-term translation, as we have done previously.