This year MILabs had the pleasure to announce two winners of the 2018 MILabs Image of the Year Award at the SNMMI meeting in Philadelphia, MILabs. Founder and CEO Prof. Dr. Freek Beekman presented these and other exciting images at the Annual MILabs SNMMI Scientific Event, showcasing a wide diversity of user applications and the impressive creativity of many researchers. Award winners are Dr. Johann Le Floc’h et al. with a consortium of Toronto’s Sunnybrook Research Institute, Caltech & McMaster University, with longitudinal imaging of radiolabeled gas-filled protein nanostructures and Dr. Ann-Marie Chacko et al. from Duke University – NUS Medical School (Singapore) with their ground-breaking image of 18F-FDG-PET/CT in Lethal Dengue Virus (DENV) Infection.
Dr. Freek Beekman stated, “Every year I continue to be amazed by the great research carried out by our users. The goal of MILabs is to make molecular imaging clear for all imaging research and we continuously strive to push the limits of technology and develop new applications of our tools so researchers can obtain highly valuable images for biomedical research.”
The first co-image of the year is the In Vivo Biodistribution of Radiolabeled Acoustic Protein Nanostructures. The research team includes: Johann Le Floc’h, Aimen Zlitni, Holly A. Bilton, Melissa Yin, Arash Farhadi, Nancy R. Janzen, Mikhail G. Shapiro, John F. Valliant, F. Stuart Foster and the article can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28956265
“The award showcases our applied multidisciplinary research effort and collaborations. This research aims at the development of the naturally occurring and versatile nanostructures, called gas vesicles, as molecular imaging agents” said Dr. Johann Le’ Floch. “The methodologies we developed necessitates SPECT imaging to visualize and quantify the biodistribution of our agents. Our MILabs VECTor system offers great effective sensitivity and resolution in small animal studies. In addition, the imaging system comes with advanced imaging analysis tools that were essential to generate our 3D quantification.”
The next co-image of the year is the inflammation imaging of Lethal Dengue Virus (DENV) Infection. The research team includes: Ann-Marie Chacko, Satoru Watanabe, Keira J. Herr, Shirin Kalimuddin, Jing Yang Tham, Joanne Ong, Marie Reolo, Raymond M.F. Serrano, Yin Bun Cheung, Jenny G.H. Low, and Subhash G. Vasudevan and the article can be found here: https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/93474
“The 2018 MILabs Image of the Year award gives recognition to our cross-institutional collaborative research in dengue between Duke-NUS Medical School and the Singapore General Hospital”, noted Dr. Ann-Marie Chacko. “Our team is thrilled that this award will further highlight the potentially transformative impact of molecular imaging on understanding dengue virus pathogenesis, and its utility in assessing the efficacy of new dengue therapeutics. These images would not be possible without the high-resolution multi-modal imaging capability of the MILabs Vector4CT that was installed at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. The user-friendly interface of the hardware and software, and easy image co-registration, facilitated faster workflow and timely publication of our efforts in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight (JCI Insight) in June 2017.”
MILabs congratulates the winners and already looks forward to the impressive in vivo images that will be generated over the coming years.
