A $300,000 grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust has made possible the purchase of a high-sensitivity live animal imaging system for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The new system will primarily be used by campus researchers in the area of nanomedicine.
Written by Cindy Brya
A $300,000 grant from the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust has made possible the purchase of a high-sensitivity live animal imaging system for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The new system will primarily be used by campus researchers in the area of nanomedicine.
Jianjun Cheng“The live animal imaging system provides the ultimate combination of sensitivity, speed, and flexibility to meet the most demanding challenges for molecular and nanomedicinal in vivo imaging,” explained Jianjun Cheng, an associate professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator (PI) for the grant-funded project.
According to Cheng, the in vivo quantitative assessment of molecular or nanoparticular signals in live animal in real time is extremely challenging but absolutely necessary.
“The imaging system is designed for demanding requirements for high sensitivity luminescence, fluorescence, radiographic, and X-ray imaging, and will enable the precise and quantitative assessment of targeting efficiency,” said Cheng, whose research is focused on design, synthesis, characterization, and evaluation of polymeric and nano-structured biomaterials for fundamental studies as well as their biomedical applications.
In addition to the proposed work to develop orthogonal chemistry mediated cancer targeting, the new system will also be used in many other projects by co-PIs and researchers across campus. These include aptamer-nanomedicine targeting, in vivo siRNA and gene delivery, dual functional theranostic nanomedicine, and more.
Co-PI’s for this lead project include Yi Lu (chemistry), Timothy Fan (veterinary medicine), William Helferich (food science and human nutrition, and Wawrzyniec Laurence Dobrucki (bioengineering). Cheng is a faculty affiliate of the Department of Chemistry, Department of Bioengineering, Beckman Institute, Institute of Genomic Biology, Materials Research Laboratory, Micro- and Nanotechnology Laboratory, and the University of Illinois Cancer Center.