NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering is seeking to fund research into novel imaging methods that can detect and create images of in vivo molecular activities, under a follow-up to an earlier request under the National Institutes of Health’s Roadmap for Medical Research program.
Researchers could use this funding to develop imaging approaches for studying markers and function of normal cells in control human subjects and patients, and for imaging markers and biochemical or physiological abnormalities of disease cells in patients.
The funding levels NIH will grant for these studies will vary in size and duration depending on the scope and nature of the proposed research.
As with other Roadmap programs, NIH wants to support innovative “high impact” approaches, instead of the incremental technology development programs already being supported.
NIH’s research objectives include developing molecular imaging probes using novel concepts that are highly specific, sensitive, and which can be applied to clinical situations. The technology also could develop tools that target a wide range of normal cells such as quantitating and characterizing viable pancreatic beta cells in type-1 diabetes, discriminating brown fat mass and metabolic activity from metabolism in surrounding tissue, and identifying non-invasive signatures of neuronal plasticity.
The investigators also could develop imaging technologies that target biological processes that might provide early markers for a range of diseases such as inflammation, fibrosis, activation of immune cells, alterations in gene expression pathways, signal transduction pathways, and post-translational modifications of proteins.
More information about the program is available here.