Press release: CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology in United Kingdom acquires MILabs integrated PET/SPECT/CT system for their in vivo imaging core laboratory.
UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS, June 7, 2016
The in vivo Imaging Core Laboratory at the CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology in United Kingdom will install the new MILabs VECTor4CT system. This laboratory provides a broad range of pre-clinical imaging services to the researchers within the Department of Oncology and has specific expertise in imaging physics and engineering, in vivo biology and image analysis. An objective of the laboratory is to enable multimodal image-guided radiotherapy of preclinical models of cancer, and to improve the clinical relevance and translational capabilities of the department’s research.
“The acquisition of the new MILabs VECTor4CT is part of an ongoing investment to facilitate new and better scanning techniques for our research on oncology disease progression and response to treatment in preclinical models” according to Sean Smart Ph.D., head of the Imaging core unit.
One of the research groups at Oxford University, the Radiopharmaceuticals and Molecular Imaging group, headed by Bart Cornelissen Ph.D., is going to use the new platform for its work in breast and pancreatic cancer models. “The capabilities of performing high energy SPECT and concurrent PET-SPECT combined with high-resolution low-dose CT imaging, plus the ability to quantify multiple nuclear imaging tracers simultaneously in small lesions, makes this multi-modal system extremely versatile to detect early stages of breast and pancreatic cancer in our models” says Dr. Cornelissen. This research was recently granted additional financial support from the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF) in United Kingdom.
MILabs shares Oxford’s vision of providing the best possible multi-modal image information from animal models for preclinical research. “We are confident that the sub-mm resolution PET/SPECT image data enhanced with the advanced capabilities of our new X-ray CT system will further enhance Radiation Oncology Institute’s molecular imaging capabilities and keep this renowned institute at the leading edge in this field” states Dr. Freek Beekman, CEO of MILabs.
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About CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology
The mission of the CRUK/MRC Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology (formerly the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology) is to explore aspects of radiation biology research that could yield new advances in the treatment of cancer. These include understanding how cells respond to and repair radiation-induced DNA damage, defining the microenvironmental factors that affect these responses and identifying targets to alter tumour or normal tissue responses to radiation. The institute aims to integrate basic research with imaging science to advance radiation therapy and enable earlier detection of secondary cancers. As one of the world-leading centres dedicated to radiation oncology and biology, the Institute now houses over 200 staff and postgraduate students – both clinical and non-clinical – and brings together research and clinical groups from a range of disciplines, including biology, chemistry, physics, medicine and computational biology.
The Institute sits within the Department of Oncology in the University of Oxford’s Medical Sciences Division and is funded by an annual £10 M core grant from CRUK and MRC. For more information, visit www.radiationoncology.ox.ac.uk.
About MILabs
MILabs provides high-end molecular imaging solutions for biomedical and pharmaceutical research. Today these systems contribute worldwide to the development of new diagnostic solutions and therapies for diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiac and neurodegenerative diseases. As documented in over hundreds of scientific articles, U-SPECT4 provides the fastest, most sensitive and highest resolution small-animal SPECT system currently available. Recently MILabs fused state-of-the-art Adaptive PET with its SPECT technology by introducing VECTor4CT. This versatile nuclear imaging system is extremely user friendly, fully integrated and enables simultaneous ultra-high resolution PET/SPECT imaging in combination with a choice of in-line low-dose high-resolution CT subsystems. For more information, visit www.milabs.com.
