Copyright 2007 Aging & Elder Health Week via NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net Aging & Elder Health Week
April 15, 2007
SECTION: EXPANDED REPORTING; Pg. 30
LENGTH: 1178 words
HEADLINE: CANCER; Cancer, Alzheimer's and Tumor-Related Therapeutics Now Able to be Tracked in Hours
BODY:
If you or someone you love has been through the pain-staking wait to
know if a particular therapeutic has worked, you understand months of
unpleasant side effects, the anxiety of the level success of the
therapeutic and most importantly the hope that the treatment is in-fact
the right one and it is localizing in the right area of the body.
For physicians and researchers at the Case Center for Imaging Research,
(Cleveland, OH) of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine,
advances in the field of cellular and molecular imaging and
Radiopharmaceutical research may help identify a multitude of
physiological changes within hours and days--not months or years, of
the treatment's administration. This Center, under the direction of
Jeffery Duerk, Ph.D., and the newly created Radiopharmaceutical
Division led by Yanming Wang, Ph.D., will change a variety of disease
detection, diagnosis and therapeutic assessment for scores of people
currently using some form of imaging as part of their care.
The Case Center for Imaging Research has helped create a 'hotbed' for
diagnostic imaging in Northeastern Ohio. Once dwarfed by the steel
industry, the region is fast becoming known for pioneering advances in
cellular and molecular imaging. Something, Duerk says "that
will greatly improve the process of advancing human health." The
Center, located on the University Hospitals Case Medical Center campus
is finally complete and houses some of the world's most powerful
imaging equipment. The Center will also become a shared resource for
the School of Medicines primary affiliate, University Hospitals Case
Medical Center, and their clinical affiliates MetroHealth Medical
Center and the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs
Medical Center; relationships with the Cleveland Clinic exist through
the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
In
1999, the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and
University Hospitals, through the Case Research Institute, submitted a
proposal defining their vision for future academic and scientific in
imaging on a regional level and the strategic applications needed to
implement the process. From 2000-2004, the Case imaging faculty in both
the Departments of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering wrote ten grant
proposals defining different instruments, scientific projects, and
opportunities to expand the impact of imaging at the institutions; of
those, eight were funded totaling over $22M. The belief in imaging and
these innovative ideas uniting medicine and technology was shared by
the Ohio 3rd Frontier Program Wright Center for Innovation grants, Ohio
Board of Regents funds, Cancer Center pilot grants, numerous NIH
R01-grants and one of NIH's most prestigious grants (a Small Animal
Imaging Resource Program-SAIRP).
From the onset, and specifically throughout 2003-04, Duerk
and the other imaging faculty knew the critical component of
implementation was still not fulfilled--the human capital investment
and intellectual knowledge needed for success--recruiting a top-level
radiochemist and a support team of leading MD/Ph.D researchers,
post-docs and research staff. This process was unlike any other--the
search was such a specialty, that it took nearly three years for a
faculty-rich search committee led by Dr's. Ray Muzic and Zhenghong Lee
to find the right person. New initiatives in establishing the Case
Medical Center's Neurological Institute, the Center for Translational
Neuroscience and the NIH's previous "Decade of the Brain", pushed Case
to create the Center's Radiopharmaceutical Division and the challenge
was finding someone who not only knew the intricacies of
radiochemistry, but the multidisciplinary talent to lead the many
aspects of Radiopharmaceutical research synergistically with the
emerging institutes and Centers.
As the
Imaging Center launched a nationwide call for applicants, twenty-plus
candidates applied, but one stood out. Yanming Wang, an innovative
chemist with a Ph.D., from the Swiss Institute of Technology, post
doctoral research from Duke University, a former faculty instructor at
the University of Pittsburgh and most recently, with the University of
Illinois.
It is Yanming's exceptionally
unique training that allows him to make molecules to not only probe,
but also look at new patient applications as well. His research spans
opportunities in Cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Epilepsy, Multiple
Sclerosis and Schizophrenia, and will each require different imaging
agents for potentially many different modalities. His basic science
education allows him to work both sides of the process - bench to
bedside or 'translational' as they say.
The importance of high-level imaging in neuroscience encompasses a
multitude of modalities. For Alzheimer's disease, the Division is
developing image markers to fine-tune the paths indicating neuron
damage to the brain at the early stage of an Alzheimer's diagnosis.
Currently, the brain analysis can only be completed at the time of
death. Other tumor-related and cancer conditions require months of drug
treatments to assess whether not only "if" the drug has worked, but to
what degree effectiveness it has worked. At times, the patient finds
the drug has not worked and needs to begin another different type of
drug treatment, prolonging the afflicted state. At the Case Center for
Imaging Research, "we have the potential to identify molecular changes
within hours--this is both quantitative and efficient", said Dr.
Yanming Wang, Ph.D. "Our ability to label drugs and molecules with
radioactivity that we can then image will allow us to not only develop
compounds that allow us to perform our diagnoses better, but also to
monitor and adjust current therapeutics on a patient-by-patient basis,
such as in prostate cancer treatment", Wang added. Previously, the only
imaging that has been available is ultrasound, MRI and SPECT (single
photon emission computed tomography).
The
Case Center for Imaging Research, while a leader in the region for
biomedical research, also contributes to the competitive economic
environment of the healthcare industry. With a successful imaging
center, the natural progression is to attract a high-caliber talent
pool for advanced research and pharmaceutical firms to develop
therapies. Only a handful of other academic medical institutions are
our neighbors in this field; Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Univ. of
Michigan and Carnegie Mellon. "The impact resonates from the core, from
our facility. We look forward to the ground-breaking discoveries made
at the Center and the global contribution to improving quality of life
for everyone--whether in our Cleveland market or the other side of the
world. It is a driving force in the future of healthcare," said Duerk.
Keywords: Biomedical Engineering, Cancer, Oncology, Pharmaceuticals,
Radiology, Therapy, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.
This article was prepared by Aging & Elder Health Week editors from
staff and other reports. Copyright 2007, Aging & Elder Health Week
via NewsRx.com.
Document 7 of 37. 
