Cells are the basic units of life. They determine normal organ function and disease development. Observations of living cells are vital to understanding, diagnosing, and successfully treating disease. Developments of cell specific contrast agents have enabled us to develop non-invasive imaging techniques that can generate detailed information about specific cells in the body. Our research program focuses on two main cellular imaging applications: 1) Cancer Imaging; 2) Stem Cell Imaging, mostly utilizing MR imaging technology. We investigate the value of clinically applicable macrophage-targeted nanoparticles for the diagnosis and treatment of tumor-associated inflammation, we develop immune cell tracking techniques for diagnosing successful cancer immunotherapies and we explore the value of "smart", activatable cellular contrast agents for diagnosing successful or unsuccessful stem cell therapies. Currently, the diagnosis of diseases and their treatment almost always involves acquiring and repeating multiple imaging tests, which are time-consuming, cause direct and indirect accumulated expenses and accumulated radiation exposures. We ultimately aim to combine tailored cell specific contrast agents with whole body imaging techniques in order to create one single diagnostic test, which provides comprehensive "one-stop" evaluations of tumor and stem cell therapies. [ - ]

Cells are the basic units of life. They determine normal organ function and disease development... [ + ]