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

光声成像（派）涉及将特定类型的光照射到体内，然后检测从体内发出的声波。这可以提供显示器官结构的图片，它们是如何工作的，以及某些分子在体内的作用。派是安全的，可以相对深入地观察身体。重要的是能够研究器官如何在体内工作，在疾病中发生了什么，在活体中，而不是“在一个盘子里”，这不能很好地反映体内发生了什么。我们将使用商业上最先进的派系统，在实验模型中研究心脏，心血管和大脑疾病以及癌症。派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，心脏是否正常跳动，血管是否阻塞，血液是否在大脑中正常流动，是否有足够的氧气输送到大脑，等等。我们还可以使用派来检查身体的任何地方是否有疾病，例如，癌派可用于观察疾病发生时发生变化的特定分子，例如，阿尔茨海默氏症和帕金森氏症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派看到，在这个项目中，我们将发明新的标签/探针来观察我们认为与引起疾病有关的分子。疾病也可能是由某些细胞不能正常工作引起的，我们也可以标记这些细胞，这样我们就可以使用派来查看它们在哪里以及它们在做什么。有时药物是通过特制的微小颗粒甚至是安全的病毒颗粒来传递的，这些颗粒也可以被标记，这样我们就可以看到药物被派传递到哪里。使用派，我们将获得人类疾病过程中发生的详细图像，以便我们可以识别在导致疾病方面重要的有害分子或细胞，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.