9.4T/20 cm MRI for Cancer Research

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请的目的是获得购买9.4T 20厘米孔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个主要用户将使用7T和拟议的9.4T系统，并获得26笔经同行评审的拨款。有很多方法可以解决不同的肿瘤学问题，包括癌症检测、预测肿瘤反应、开发监测肿瘤和药物代谢的方法以提高治疗效果。这些项目具有高度的可转译性，因为基于3T MRI系统相对普遍的可用性，以及更高场强的人体磁铁的可用性（尽管仍然有限），大多数这些方法都可以转化为临床。人们可以总结这些集体多样化项目的长期目标，即通过改善治疗方法或通过开发早期反应（或耐药性）标记以避免无效治疗产生的副作用，通过增强反应而不相应地增加毒性来改善癌症护理。不同项目的设计和方法是不同的，但共同的原则将最大限度地从拟议系统的实验中获得数据。这些方法包括：1)继续进行高通量、相对直接的动物成像研究，以满足众多研究者对现有4.7T系统的需求，该系统场强较低，但孔宽，更容易同时容纳多只动物；2)将更苛刻的实验集中在7T和拟议的9.4T系统上；进行适当的模拟实验和初步实验，以确定使用9.4T和7T系统，NIH支持的用户的实验将获得相对更多的收益；4)使用统计上有效的实验组；5)继续我们的政策，努力在实验设计、适当硬件的构建方面为各种用户提供支持，并在必要时协助实验的执行，以确保它们以优化的方式进行。具有最好的信号噪声。拟议的9.4T仪器将支持的应用程序解决广泛的肿瘤学问题，正如它们产生的不同资助机制所反映的那样。这些包括关注广泛的肿瘤（脑癌、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（缺氧）、肿瘤间质压力升高导致血液流动和药物输送不畅、对更好的肿瘤模型系统的需求、成像技术的改进等）。解决这些问题的方法各不相同，但共同点是，基于现有技术，可以很容易地将任何这些发现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.