Contents
- Funding Matters
From Brain Imaging to Chemical Probes
Funding Matters
From Brain Imaging to Chemical Probes
Grants enable advanced technologies.
John Gore, director of Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, received a $2 million award to support the purchase of a 7-tesla human magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy system. It provides the highest magnetic imaging available for humans and is one of only several such instruments in the country. (Photo by Dana Johnson, courtesy of Vanderbilt University Medical Center)
Looking at a photograph or tapping fingers to a tune sends signals to certain areas of the brain, increasing blood flow to those regions. Changes in blood flow and, more precisely, in the amount of oxygen can be detected by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), an increasingly popular technique for probing the working human brain. John Gore, director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science in Nashville and world-renowned expert in the technology, has used fMRI to determine which parts of the brain “light up” when, for example, schizophrenic patients experience hallucinations or alcoholics have cravings.
Whereas fMRI gives insights into how the brain functions, another sophisticated technology tells researchers about the activities of tiny molecules. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy exploits the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei to provide three-dimensional molecular structures. Maurizio Pellecchia of the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, Calif., has taken NMR spectroscopy to a new level by using it to study how proteins interact with one another and with other molecules. The information suggests how interactions among different molecules in the body generate signals necessary for biological processes and functions.
Both Gore’s and Pellecchia’s pioneering research recently got a boost through NCRR’s High-End Instrumentation (HEI) Grant Program. Established in 2002, the HEI Program helps researchers purchase expensive equipment, such as imaging systems, high-end microscopes, supercomputers, and spectrometers, by providing anywhere from $750,000 to $2 million toward the cost. To date, NCRR has awarded 101 HEI grants and 2 supplements totaling $155.8 million. The most recent round of 14 awards, including those to Gore and Pellecchia, was announced in June. “Researchers can ask questions they could not ask before. They can do amazing experiments only possible with the new equipment,” says Marjorie Tingle, director of the HEI Program. “The new instruments have much higher resolution and unsurpassed sensitivity.”
Indeed, thanks in part to $2 million in support from NCRR, Gore’s Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science now houses a 7-tesla (7T) MRI scanner—the largest and most powerful MRI instrument currently available. Because of its greater magnetic strength, the new 35-ton scanner offers a more sensitive measure of changes in brain activity. It also provides higher resolution, giving researchers even more detailed pictures of the brain. Thus researchers can get a better idea of which areas of the brain are involved in complex behaviors or diseases.
The new 7T MRI scanner is bolstering the work of about 30 Vanderbilt researchers studying developmental disorders, learning disabilities, and psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, pathological gambling, and depression. In addition, through grants from NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the imaging institute provides training to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and medical residents in state-of-the-art imaging techniques. “We are training more than 50 people in imaging science,” says Gore. “This new instrument will be a major flagship for a lot of their work.”
The new scanner will also serve the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance for Research Training in Neuroscience, a partnership that grew out of a broader, formal alliance, created in 1998 between Meharry Medical College—a historically black institution in Nashville—and Vanderbilt University Medical Center to foster collaboration on biomedical research, research training, and clinical care. Recent fMRI work within this Alliance has focused on identifying which brain circuits are active in chronic alcoholics and drug addicts during various stages of rehabilitation to understand the neuronal bases of these conditions.
