9.4T/20 cm MRI for Cancer Research

描述(由申请人提供)：本申请的目标是获得购买9.4T 20厘米口径水平核磁共振系统的支持，用于体内生物医学应用，专注于癌症研究。有15个主要用户和26个同行审查的赠款将使用7T和拟议的9.4T系统。有各种各样的方法来解决不同的肿瘤学问题，包括癌症检测、预测肿瘤反应，以及开发监测肿瘤和药物代谢的方法以提高治疗结果。这些项目具有很高的转化性，因为这些方法中的大多数都可以转化到临床上，这是基于相对普遍的3T MRI系统的可用性，以及在更高磁场强度下不断增长的(尽管仍然有限的)人体磁体的可用性。人们可以将这些集体不同项目的长期目标概括为通过增强反应而不相应增加毒性来改善癌症护理，要么是通过改进治疗方法，要么是通过开发早期反应(或耐药)标记物，以避免无效治疗的副作用。不同项目的设计和方法各不相同，但共同的原则将最大限度地利用拟议系统上的实验数据。这些方法包括1)在现有的4.7T系统上继续进行高通量、相对简单的动物成像研究，该系统具有较低的场强但较宽的口径并且可以更容易地同时容纳多个动物，2)将更苛刻的实验集中在7T和拟议的9.4T系统上，3)在必要时，执行适当的模型和初步实验，以确定哪些NIH支持的用户的实验将通过使用9.4T与7T系统相比获得相对更多的收益，4)使用统计有效的试验组和5)继续我们的政策，试图在实验的设计、适当的硬件的构建方面为不同的用户提供支持，如有必要，协助执行实验，以确保它们以优化的方式进行，并尽可能获得最佳的信噪比。将在拟议的9.4T仪器上得到支持的应用程序解决了广泛的肿瘤学问题，这反映在产生这些问题的不同供资机制上。这些措施包括关注广泛的肿瘤(脑、前列腺癌、乳腺癌、肉瘤、结肠癌)，解决肿瘤学中各种相关的生理问题(缺氧、肿瘤间质压力升高导致血流和药物输送不良、需要更好的肿瘤模型系统、成像方面的改进等)。解决这些问题的方法多种多样，但都有共同的可行性，即根据现有技术，将这些发现中的任何一项从临床前转化为临床领域。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this application is to obtain support for purchase of a 9.4T 20 cm bore horizontal NMR system for in vivo biomedical applications, focused on cancer research. There are 15 major users with 26 peer reviewed grants who will use the 7T and proposed 9.4T systems. There are a wide range of approaches to addressing different oncologic problems, including cancer detection, predicting tumor response, and developing methods of monitoring tumor and drug metabolism to enhance therapeutic outcomes. The projects are highly translational in that most of these methods can be translated to the clinic, based on the relatively common availability of 3T MRI systems, and the growing (although still limited) availability of human magnets at even higher field strengths. One can summarize the long range goal of these collectively diverse projects as the improvement of cancer care by enhancing responses without correspondingly increased toxicity, either by improving therapies or by development of early markers of response (or resistance) so as to avoid side effects from ineffective treatments. The design and methods of the different projects are diverse but common principles will maximize the data obtained from experiments on the proposed system. These methods include 1) continuing high throughput, relatively straightforward animal imaging research needed by numerous investigators on the existing 4.7T system which has a lower field strength but wide bore and can more readily accommodate multiple animals concurrently, 2) focus more demanding experiments on the 7T and proposed 9.4T systems, 3) where necessary, perform appropriate phantom and preliminary experiments to determine which NIH supported users' experiments will gain relatively more by use of the 9.4T vs the 7T system, 4) the use of statistically valid experimental groups and 5) continue our policy of trying to provide support to the various users in the design of experiments, construction of appropriate hardware, and if necessary, assisting in the performance of the experiments to ensure that they are performed in an optimized manner, with best signal to noise possible. The applications that will be supported on the proposed 9.4T instrument address a wide range of oncology problems, as reflected by the different funding mechanisms from which they arise. These include a focus on a wide spectrum of tumors (brain, prostate, breast, sarcomas, colon cancers), addressing varying relevant physiological problems in oncology (hypoxia (lack of oxygen), elevated tumor interstitial pressure leading to poor blood flow and drug delivery, the need for better tumor model systems, improvements in imaging etc). The approaches to addressing these problems are quite varied but have in common the feasibility to readily translate any of these findings from the preclinical to the clinical realm, based on existing technology.