Imaging Life with Light and Sound: State-of-the-art Photoacoustic Imaging For Mechanistic Understanding Of Human Disease

光声成像(PAI)包括将一种特定类型的光照射到人体内，然后检测从人体发出的声波。这可以提供显示器官结构、它们是如何工作的以及某些分子在体内做什么的图片。派是安全的，可以相对深入地观察身体。重要的是要能够研究器官在体内是如何工作的，在疾病中发生了什么，在活的对象中发生了什么，而不是在一个不能很好地反映体内发生的事情的盘子里。我们将使用商业上最先进的PAI系统来研究实验模型中的心脏、心血管和大脑疾病以及癌症。PAI可用于研究活体受试者的心脏和大脑等器官，以查看器官是否正常工作，例如，心脏跳动是否正常，血管是否堵塞，血液在大脑中是否正常流动，是否有足够的氧气输送到大脑等。我们还可以使用PAI来查看体内是否有疾病，如癌症。PAI可以用来观察当有疾病时发生变化的特定分子，例如，阿尔茨海默氏症和帕金森氏病患者大脑中的异常蛋白质团块。有时分子必须被标记才能被PAI看到，在这个项目中，我们将发明新的标签/探针来查看我们认为与疾病相关的分子。疾病也可以由某些细胞不能正常工作引起，我们也可以标记这些细胞，这样我们就可以使用PAI来了解它们在哪里以及它们在做什么。有时药物是通过特殊制造的微小颗粒甚至是安全的病毒颗粒输送的，这些颗粒也可以被标记，这样我们就可以看到PAI正在将药物输送到哪里。使用PAI，我们将获得人类疾病期间发生的详细图像，以便我们能够识别在导致疾病中起重要作用的有害分子或细胞，并开发针对这些分子和细胞的新药。

Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) involves shining a particular type of light into the body and then detecting sound waves coming out of the body. This can provide pictures showing the structure of organs, how they are working, and what certain molecules are doing in the body. PAI is safe and can look relatively deep into the body. It is important to be able to study how organs work in the body, what is happening in disease, in a living subject, rather than "in a dish" which does not reflect so well what happens in the body.We will use the most advanced PAI system commercially available to study heart, cardiovascular and brain disease and cancer in experimental models. PAI can be used to study organs such as the heart and the brain in living subjects, to see if organs are working properly, e,g., is the heart beating properly, is a blood vessel blocked, is blood flowing properly in the brain, is enough oxygen being delivered to the brain, etc. We can also use PAI to see if there is disease anywhere in the body, e,g., cancer. PAI can be used to see particular molecules that are changed when there is disease, e.g., the abnormal protein clumps in the brain in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease. Sometimes molecules have to be tagged to be seen by PAI, and in this project, we will invent new tags/probes to see molecules we think are involved in causing disease. Disease can also be caused by certain cells not working properly and we can also tag these cells so that we can use PAI to see where they are and what they are doing. Sometimes drugs are delivered by specially made tiny particles or even in safe virus particles, and these can also be tagged so that we can see where drugs are being delivered by PAI. Using PAI we will get detailed pictures of what happens during human disease so that we can identify harmful molecules or cells that are important in causing disease and develop new drugs that will target these molecules and cells.