ICMIC@Stanford 2010 - 2015
Faculty
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Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD
The Principal Investigator's Role
Dr. Gambhir will take on the leadership role for the ICMIC@Stanford
scientific program with its goal of developing applications of
multimodality molecular imaging to cancer biology. Dr. Gambhir will
assume the major administrative and management role needed for the
ICMIC@Stanford. All administrative staff will report to him, and he
will make final approval for all administrative expenditures such as
personnel assignment, major purchases, travel, etc. The ICMIC@Stanford
has an Executive Committee, which will function as the major management
unit for this program. Dr. Gambhir as Chair of the Executive Committee
will be responsible for making final decisions related to (i) how
Career Development Component trainees are selected, supervised, and
evaluated (Section B.12) and (ii) how Developmental Projects are
chosen, monitored, and concluded (Section B.10). Drs. Gambhir and
Contag will co-chair the ICMIC@Stanford Executive Committee to ensure
that Specialized Resources are allocated in an expedient and equitable
manner. The Executive Committee considers interdisciplinary exchange
between the ICMIC@Stanford program and other Organized Research Units
(ORU's) on campus (e.g., Bio-X) to be key in establishing a successful
and fully integrated program at Stanford. Dr. Gambhir will lead the
effort. |
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Christopher Contag, PhD
The Co-Principal Investigator's Role
Dr. Contag, as Co-PI will assist Dr. Gambhir in all aspects of the
ICMIC@Stanford. Dr. Contag will participate in all meetings of the
Executive Committee, the major decision-making body of the
ICMIC@Stanford, and will chair meetings of this group in Dr. Gambhir's
absence. With Dr. Gambhir, he will co-chair the meetings of the
Executive Committee as they prioritize access to the Specialized
Resources. Dr. Contag will join Dr. Gambhir in promoting
interdisciplinary interactions between the ICMIC@Stanford program and
other Organized Research Units (ORUs) on the Stanford campus; e.g., the
Stanford Comprehensive Cancer Center (application to be submitted in
March, 2005) and the Bio-X Program, which is home-based in the Clark
Center where Drs. Contag and Gambhir have their main labs. Together,
both will assure a well-managed and efficient Specialized Resource
component. With
Dr. Gambhir's administrative leadership roles while at UCLA, and with
Dr. Contag's leadership role on the P20, both will be able to
coordinate the efforts of the Specialized Resources of ICMIC@Stanford
with the needs of the ICMIC@Stanford investigators fort to promote. |
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Francis Blankenberg, PhD
- is an Associate Professor of Pediatric Radiology focused on
pre-clinical models and clinical applications of novel SPECT and PET
probes. His laboratory developed and validated 99mTc-Annexin, a SPECT
probe for imaging cell death. His Developmental Project #4 (Section E)
will develop new VEGF probes for PET imaging of angiogenesis He
represents the part of the molecular imaging chain in which new
diagnostic imaging probes must be validated in small animal models
prior to their pilot testing in patients. These strategies have the
potential to directly impact the monitoring of cancer patients
undergoing anti-angiogenesis therapy. |
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Helen Blau, PhD
- is the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology (http://www.stanford.edu/group/blau/).
Dr. Blau was chair of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology during
1997-2002 and has been the Director of Gene Therapy Technology at
Stanford since 1997. Dr. Blau has significant experience in issues
related to mentoring junior faculty, grant management, running a
graduate training program, and is very well linked to the basic science
community on campus. She has her own highly active molecular
pharmacology research laboratory that has started to incorporate small
animal molecular imaging. |
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Zhen Cheng, PhD
- is an Assistant Professor in Radiology focused on PET/SPECT radiochemistry and multimodal molecular probe development. He brings to the molecular imaging research chain (Figure 1) radiochemistry expertise and a project focused on the chemistry/radiochemistry of fundamental molecular probe design. His Research Project #4 (Section C) will focus on refinement and validation of a new class of RGD peptide probes that target tumor angiogenesis. The probes developed in this project for microPET imaging of brain tumor angiogenesis in pre-clinical animal models along with his models to test angiogenesis inhibitors can be translated into a clinical setting for improved patient management. |
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Scott Delp Ph.D.
- is the Chair of Bioengineering and an Associate Professor of
Mechanical Engineering in the Stanford School of Engineering. He has
made molecular imaging a key priority for Bioengineering and has
committed a new faculty billet that will bridge Bioengineering with
Molecular Imaging for a search to begin in late 2004. He is working
closely with Drs. Gambhir and Pelc to strengthen bridges between
Bioengineering and MIPS. |
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Dean Felsher, MD, PhD
- is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of
Oncology. He represents the new breed of translational scientists who
can develop mouse models of human cancer and translate understanding of
basic cancer biology into advances in therapeutics. His project on
multimodality-imaging oncogene-induced tumorogenesis, Research Project
#2, (Section C) (represents the mouse models component of the molecular
imaging research chain (Figure 1) and is a vital component of
eventually translating fundamental discoveries from bench to bedside.
His use of molecular imaging in the small animal models he is
developing with a focus on the c-myc oncogene should eventually help in
developing and testing new therapies in mouse and in man. |
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Gary Glazer, MD
- is the Chair of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine. He has
been at Stanford for over 12 years and has helped to build all aspects
of Radiological Sciences in the medical center. He is highly supportive
of molecular imaging and has mobilized significant resources to help
build the MIPS. He is also highly interested in the science of
Molecular Imaging and just recently completed a 9 month sabbatical with
Dr. Markus Schwaiger (Munich) to better understand the field. Dr.
Gambhir, in his role as head of Nuclear Medicine reports directly to
Dr. Glazer. |
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Gary Glover, PhD
- is Professor of Radiology and head of the Radiation Sciences Lab
(RSL). He, along with Drs. Norbert Pelc and Gary Glazer, helped build
the RSL into a world-class MRI research center growing it from 2
faculty in 1992 to over 12 faculty and 50 staff in 2004. His expertise
in MRI and building a large imaging program on the Stanford campus will
be a great asset to the IAB and to the ICMIC@Stanford. |
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Richard Hoppe, PhD
- is the Chair of Radiation Oncology at the Stanford School of
Medicine. He has been actively involved in the support of Molecular
Imaging and has invested in clinical PET/CT equipment as well as a
faculty billet focused on molecular imaging. He is also coordinating
efforts within his department to better link the basic science of
molecular imaging with clinical applications, including development of
strategies to study tumor hypoxia with molecular imaging. |
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Ron Levy, MD
- is Chief, Division of Medical Oncology and a Professor of Medicine.
His research interests are in focused on cancer biology of lymphoma and
therapies for lymphoma. He will help to better link translational
scientists as well as clinicians into the ICMIC@Stanford effort. He is
actively integrating imaging into his own labs toolbox and encouraging
its use in several clinical trials. He will help to bring medical
oncology fellows interested in molecular imaging to he attention of the
ICMIC@Stanford. He will also play a key role as more assays are
translated into clinically useful imaging procedures for the management
of cancer patients. |
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Albert Macovski, PhD
- is the Canon USA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Radiology
(Emeritus). Dr. Macovski brings to this advisory board great
distinction in virtually every area of medical imaging. He has been
involved in imaging research for most of his career. Since joining the
Electrical Engineering faculty at Stanford in 1976, his interests have
focused on medical imaging which has included ultrasound, DSA, CT, and
more recently magnetic resonance imaging. In 1985 Dr. Macovski founded
the Magnetic Resonance Systems Research Lab located in the Electrical
Engineering Department at Stanford, which is devoted to MRI
instrumentation research. Dr. Macovski has advised over 45 doctoral
students during his career. |
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Robert Negrin, MD
- is director of the bone marrow transplant program (http://www-med.stanford.edu/shs/txp/bmt/)
at Stanford Hospital and is an Associate Professor of Medicine. He runs
an active lab focused on cell transplantation biology. He utilizes
bioluminescence for cell trafficking models and understands the power
of molecular imaging in studying cancer biology. He has been actively
involved in helping to spread the word about molecular imaging within
the medical center. He also has several NCI grants that utilize
bioluminescence based molecular imaging. He is now actively using
PET-CT in cancer patient management. He is also an investigator on
Research Project #3 (Contag PI). |
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David Paik, PhD
- is an Assistant Professor in Radiology interested in imaging
informatics and biomedical computation. He research interests are in
developing and validating informatics methods to extract information
from medical images. These methods are used for image-based model
creation, image segmentation, computer aided diagnosis, image
quantitation and visualization. He is the PI of Specialized Resource #4
that will provide support to ICMIC@Stanford research projects and
developmental projects in image quantitation, visualization and
biostatistics. This Specialized Resource works especially closely with
Specialized Resource #3 that provides small animal imaging to the
center. |
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Norbert Pelc, DSc
- is Vice-chair and Professor of Radiology, with a courtesy appointment
in Electrical Engineering. He has over 12 years experience in mentoring
junior physics/engineering faculty and graduate students/post-docs. He
also has significant experience in developing and managing training
programs including the Program in Advanced Techniques for Cancer
Imaging and the Radiological Sciences Lab (RSL) Training Program. In
addition, Dr. Pelc has extensive experience in the development,
implementation, and evaluation of new imaging technologies, including
MRI and CT, and is a recognized leader in this field. Dr. Pelc is also
one of 5 scientists on the Presidents Advisory council for the National
Institutes of Biomedical and Imaging (NIBIB). He has significant
interactions with the School of Engineering, Dept. of Applied Physics
in addition to the Department of Radiology. |
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Philip Pizzo, MD
- is the Dean of the School of Medicine and along with Dr. Glazer was
pivotal in the initiation of a University-wide commitment to the
Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS). We are delighted that he
continues to be highly committed to the MIPS and has agreed to serve on
the IAB for the ICMIC@Stanford. Dr. Gambhir, as Director of the MIPS,
reports directly to Dr. Pizzo and meets with him once every 2 months on
a formal basis. |
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JiangHong Rao, PhD
- is a new Assistant Professor in Radiology and Bio-X and is focused on
molecular imaging research at the interface of synthetic organic
chemistry and cell biology. Dr. Rao trained initially under Dr. George
Whitesides in synthetic organic chemistry at Harvard and then under
Roger Tsien in cell biology/pharmacology at UCSD. He represents that
part of the molecular imaging research chain in which fundamental
assays are developed for the field. His Developmental Project #1
(Section E) will study a new assay to image endogenous mRNA levels in
living subjects utilizing fluorescence and bioluminescence optical
imaging. These assays may help to better understand cancer biology and
to develop and test better anti-cancer therapeutics in pre-clinical
models. His chemistry expertise will also qualify him to serve as Co-PI
of Specialized Resource #1 (Section D) along with Dr. Xiaoyuan (Shawn)
Chen. |
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Mark Schnitzer, PhD
- is a new Assistant Professor of Applied Physics and is also in the
Bio-X. He trained in Physics at Princeton and then worked at Bell-labs
prior to starting his faculty position at Stanford. He has been
developing optical endoscopes to image single cells using fluorescence
in intact living rodents. In Developmental Project #2 (Section E) he
has teamed up with Dr. Lawrence Recht, a neuro-oncologist to study
tumor cell progression in the rodent brain. He represents the important
part of the molecular imaging chain in which new imaging
instrumentation is developed and then pilot-tested in small animal
models. This will help to better understand tumor cell biology at the
cellular level with cells in their native intact environment and spur a
lot of research to bridge imaging at cellular level resolution to
millimeter resolution. |
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Matt Scott, PhD
- is Professor of Developmental Biology, a Howard Hughes Medical
Investigator and head of the Bio-X program. He is also Chairman of the
Bio-X Scientific Leadership Council at Stanford to which Dr. Gambhir
also belongs. He has been very supportive of molecular imaging and made
it a top priority for the Clark Center and for the Bio-X Program.
Through his direct efforts well over 10,000 square feet of lab space,
including the small animal imaging resource (Resource #3) were made
possible. His research is focused on studying evolutionarily conserved
genes to learn how the growth of embryos is controlled and organized
and how birth defects and cancer arise when developmental regulatory
genes malfunction. |
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Paul Wender, PhD
- is the Bergstrom Professor of Chemistry in the Department of
Chemistry, School of Humanities and Sciences. His research interests
are focused on organic chemistry and medicinal chemistry. He is very
interested in linking the pharmaceutical industry with Molecular
Imaging and in forming stronger bridges between the Department of
Chemistry and the MIPS. He will be a key liaison to involving other
Chemistry faculty in the MIPS and ICMIC@Stanford effort. |
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