Title: Imperial College London Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre: Discovery and development of biomarkers and technologies for imaging pharmacodynamics and in vivo functional genomics of drug resistance
Funder: Cancer Research UK

Abstract: The purpose of this proposal is to create the Imperial College London Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre (ICLCCIC). This Centre will foster interdisciplinary research in cancer imaging - combining strengths in probe design with synthetic chemistry, probe validation in pre-clinical models, analytical software development, signal processing/visualisation, and clinical validation to translate biomedical discoveries into health benefits in the short to medium term, particularly in the areas of cancer drug development and therapeutic management of patients. Our strategic research goal is to develop imaging probes and visualisation tools to support three areas of translational cancer research (below): • Early and objective assessment of drug response with emphasis on intracellular cell signalling processes including proliferation, MAP kinase pathway/PI3 kinase pathway activities and apoptosis. • Improved characterisation of tumour microenvironment and drug resistance phenotype with emphasis on invasion/metastasis, hypoxia, angiogenesis and drug transport to provide a better understanding of tumour biology, heterogeneity, and resistance phenotype in living subjects. • Improved visualisation of tumours to aid detection. The Centre will support different imaging approaches for cancer research. The major imaging modality will be positron emission tomography (PET) as we have the biggest strength in this area with respect to cancer research, pre-clinically and in cancer patients. We will also develop new strengths in magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound (MRI and US) of cancer by bringing together existing expertise within Imperial College currently devoted to other disease areas. We intend to expand our current CRUK imaging programme to create a critical mass of researchers. The expansion will bring about: • Discovery of novel PET radiotracers, and MRI and US contrast agents. • Development and application of microfluidic technology to radiochemistry and nanoparticle synthesis. • Development of new research focused at end-stage radiolabelling of small molecules, peptides and peptidomimetics. • Development and validation of new probes for pharmacodynamics and in vivo functional genomics of drug resistance in pre-clinical models and testing in cancer patients. • Development of novel, mathematical modelling approaches, spatial and kinetic filters, motion compensation and registration methodologies, and integration of these into software for parametric reconstruction. This combination of physical, natural and biological sciences will make us the internationally leading centre for cancer imaging research. Finally, we aim to train the next generation of multi-disciplinary cancer imaging scientists, providing relevant integrated MRes (Bioimaging Sciences) and PhD training opportunities for collaborations across the College.


Research activity codes: 2.6 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (AETIOLOGY);4.1 DISCOVERY AND PRECLINICAL TESTING OF MARKERS AND TECHNOLOGIES;5.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT);4.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (DETECTION)
Health categories: CANCER AND NEOPLASMS