Imaging Probe Development Center (IPDC)

Background and Mission

The Imaging Probe Development Center (IPDC) is part of the trans-NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiative and is dedicated to the production of new imaging probes for the intramural NIH research community, although plans to extend this service to the extramural community are being considered. IPDC comprises one aspect of the Molecular Libraries and Imaging portion of the plan, which itself falls under the New Pathways to Discovery part of that 2003 Roadmap plan. IPDC is administered by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute for the benefit of the entire community of intramural NIH scientists, and is already working on projects for requesting scientists from more than a dozen NIH Institutes. Nearly all of these imaging probes are not commercially available, nor are they viable commercial products, and most are new compositions-of-matter. IPDC serves scientists from the intramural community who would otherwise be limited in their investigations of promising new imaging probes by a lack of synthetic chemistry or radiochemistry capabilities.

The IPDC was born from the realization that imaging technologies will be crucial in basic, translational and clinical research in the 21st century, and that the synthetic chemistry required to reliably produce imaging probes lies at the heart of research within imaging technologies. To this end the IPDC has recruited the equipment and expertise to concurrently synthesize multiple types of imaging probes for bioscientists with diverse research interests, encompassing all imaging modalities, including optical, radionuclide, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance. The IPDC embodies an exciting new approach to apply and combine chemistry and imaging sciences toward specific problems in biology and medical sciences, and will be a truly interdisciplinary effort aimed at maximizing returns from the revolutionary new discoveries being described in modern imaging. A significant part of the IPDC will also be directed, independently, to the discovery of new imaging approaches and compositions. The IPDC has been set up in a newly refurbished modern laboratory in Rockville, MD and houses scientific staff, mostly chemists, who have interests and expertise in one or more aspects of molecular imaging.

The IPDC is generating known and novel imaging probes for targeting receptors, cells and tissues, and for preclinical in vivo evaluations by its intramural collaborators. Many such interesting agents have been described in the scientific literature, but are often not explored further due to lack of a reliable supply of reagent, and one aspect of the IPDC’s mission is to rectify this situation. IPDC-supplied reagents will not be limited to one imaging modality, but will include the flexible application of diverse technologies. Also, the IPDC will seek to develop novel state-of-the-art imaging probes in collaboration with biological and biomedical intramural scientists who can provide or suggest suitable targeting agent/receptor pairs.

Increased knowledge of disease-related cellular sub-structures, combined with an ever-growing expertise in the design of target-specific probes can be further combined with contemporaneous improvements being seen in imaging modalities. These discrete advances can be brought together through the syntheses of rationally-designed probes to fully optimize contrast characteristics and thereby usher in new generations of imaging and detection agents. The need for this new interdisciplinary Roadmap program is seen as overcoming a critical barrier in imaging and targeting studies that could ultimately benefit all disciplines within biological and clinical sciences.

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