The main goal of this proposal is to build a world-class pre-clinical multimodal imaging core facility to support the ongoing and future cancer research of nearly 100 different PIs from several institutions across North Texas. Imaging plays a central role not only in detection of cancer but also in monitoring response to therapy. A response to therapy is often defined as tumor shrinkage but given that tumors detected by imaging typically consist of many different cell types and may infiltrate healthy tissue, tumor shrinkage alone is not enough to predict complete eradication of cancer. Although current imaging technologies have improved substantially over the past 10 years, much more can b...

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The main goal of this proposal is to build a world-class pre-clinical multimodal imaging core facility to support the ongoing and future cancer research of nearly 100 different PIs from several institutions across North Texas. Imaging plays a central role not only in detection of cancer but also in monitoring response to therapy. A response to therapy is often defined as tumor shrinkage but given that tumors detected by imaging typically consist of many different cell types and may infiltrate healthy tissue, tumor shrinkage alone is not enough to predict complete eradication of cancer. Although current imaging technologies have improved substantially over the past 10 years, much more can be done to image specific biomarkers of disease that reflect the biochemistry and physiology of the disease often driven by gene activation and control. This more detailed presentation of cancer will overcome current ambiguity of diagnostic imaging with respect to differentiation of different tumor types, disease progression and therapy response. Thus it is required to add molecular, multimodal and interventional imaging to the cancer investigators toolbox. UT Southwestern has recently invested heavily into respective small animal imaging infrastructure, which shall be complemented by this grant in order to add complementary imaging technology and additional personnel for largely enhanced user service. A major emphasis of this core facility is to not only to make the latest imaging equipment available to investigators but to support them with scan protocol and data analysis service, educational workshops, hands-on training sessions, automated image analysis pipelines, and integration of multi-modality imaging platforms. Our goal is to make beyond state of the art preclinical small animal imaging readily available, assessable, and understandable to all cancer investigators and to train the next generation of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral cancer researchers.

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