Imaging, Modeling and Engineering of Diabetic Tissues

 描述（由申请人提供）：尽管最近在血糖控制方面取得了进展，但糖尿病发病率的持续上升导致疾病并发症的负担不断增加。治疗的主要限制包括无法对1型和2型糖尿病进行生物工程β细胞替代，以及监测和成像疾病的发展，以及工程修复糖尿病组织。这些进步取决于整个物理和生物科学的创新和发现，以及将这些进步应用于相关临床问题的能力。以下例子描述了当前与基础科学和转化科学的进步密切相关的挑战。(1)细胞治疗和组织工程的进展有望在糖尿病组织修复方面取得重大突破，但需要模型系统以及潜在替代细胞的非侵入性成像来确定递送到靶位点。(2)需要开发新的和混合成像系统，包括微观和宏观方法，如PET和光学或光声成像，以获得更深入和更精细的组织病理评估。(3)具有多模态成像能力和药物有效载荷的纳米颗粒需要优化并进入临床试验。为了改变糖尿病的结果，这些和其他挑战必须由工程师，物理学家，计算机科学家，生物学家和医生组成的跨学科团队在生物学，技术和医学之间的界面上共同努力。该计划旨在使这些过程，以使技术和工程的进步承担研究和翻译的挑战，以改善治疗效果，通过培养新一代的研究人员在物理科学和工程方面的实力，并密切接触和参与生物医学研究的相关领域。双指导的博士前和博士后研究人员将开发和应用新的成像，建模（计算和实验）和工程方法，以解决糖尿病和相关病理学的关键问题。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite recent advances in blood glucose control, the continually rising incidence of diabetes leads to an ever- increasing burden of disease complications. Major limitations to treatment include inability to bioengineer beta cell replacement for both type 1 and 2 diabetes, as well as to monitor and image the development of the disease, and to engineer repair of diabetic tissues. Such advances depend on innovations and discoveries throughout the physical and biological sciences, and the ability to bring these advances to the relevant clinical problems. The following examples describe current relevant challenges that are intimately dependent on advances in basic and translational sciences. (1) Progress in cell therapy and tissue engineering promises major breakthroughs in repair of diabetic tissues, but model systems as well as noninvasive imaging of potential replacement cells will be needed to ascertain delivery to target sites. (2) Novel and hybrid imaging systems need to be developed, including microscopic and macroscopic approaches such as PET and optical or photoacoustic imaging are needed to gain deeper and finer assessment of tissue pathologies. (3) Nanoparticles with multimodality imaging capabilities and drug payloads need to be optimized and moved into clinical trials. To transform diabetes outcomes, these and other challenges must be met by interdisciplinary teams of engineers, physicists, computer scientists, biologists, and physicians working together at the interfaces between biology, technology, and medicine. This program seeks to enable these processes, in order to bring advances in technology and engineering to bear on the challenges of research and translation to improved therapeutic outcome, by training a new generation of researchers with strength in physical science and engineering, and with intimate exposure to and involvement in relevant areas of biomedical research. Dually mentored pre-Doctoral and post-Doctoral researchers will develop and apply novel imaging, modeling (both computational and experimental) and engineering approaches to key questions in diabetes and associated pathologies.