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Imaging Cluster

The Imaging cluster includes chemists, medical scientists, engineers, philosophers and physiologists. The aim is to develop methods and apply new technologies to produce improved and more detailed imaging of processes that occur in humans and animals.The past two centuries have seen successive revolutions in how we visualise and understand the ways in which illnesses begin and progress in the human body. These range from staining biological samples with selected chemicals, to the development of microscopy and X-rays, to techniques such as MRI scanning today. Ideally, the pathophysiology of cells, tissues and organs in living organisms should be studied in real time, allowing diseases to be identified and imaged, and their treatment monitored using specific targeted therapies. This would allow medical specialists to provide more localized and personal medicine. An example would be the use of molecular probes injected into the bloodstream to enable the effectiveness of cancer drugs reducing the blood supply to a tumour to be directly monitored.

The Imaging cluster aims to achieve this by using bioluminescent and fluorescing liquids attached to the molecules used to treat illnesses. Current research is focussed on developing responsive molecular probes for ‘hypoxia’ or oxygen starvation, which plays a role in tissue damage in a wide variety of diseases, particularly stroke, thrombosis and coronary disorders. Much of the damage inflicted by these events can be traced to oxygen starvation and the changes in physiology that result during the body’s attempt to recover the situation. The group is developing probes that not only respond to changes in local oxygen concentration inside cells but also allow accurate calibration of the oxygen concentration. Hypoxic areas of tumours have also been identified as a possible approach to therapy. Other work focuses on attempting to image the central nervous system.

Imaging

Image of the diverse local inhibitory nerve cells as they integrate into the juvenile mouse forebrain. The top third of the image is the region of the brain important for the sensation of touch while the bottom third is a more primitive part of the cerebral cortex - the hippocampus, which is important for memory consolidation. The multicoloured diversity of the cell types is revealed using fluorescent probes either under genetic control or via antibody-labelling with fluorescent tags. Understanding how these cells contribute to the highly dynamic process of brain development is of great importance as failure in a number of these various populations to integrate properly is thought to result in neurological conditions as diverse as autism, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and epilepsy.