NANOBILD

NANOBILD: Nanomaterials for multimodal medical imaging

Biomimetic synthetic nanomaterials hold great promise for applications in medicine. Early breakthroughs can be expected for nanomaterials that enhance and extend existing imaging technologies. Such materials can act as radiotracers (PET; SPECT), optical probes (bioluminescence / fluorescence OI) or contrast enhancers (MRI) as being targeted to specific tissue and disease markers, thereby allowing temporal and spatial resolution down to the micron scale for medical imaging technologies.

Examples are: oxide nanoparticles as contrast enhancers for magnetic resonance imaging, quantum dots or metal nanoparticles for optical probes, equipped with organic and biomimetic shells that mediate their biomolecular interactions and allow them to evade clearance in vivo and with added ligands to target binding to e.g. tumor markers. The same holds true for the combination of optical probes with radiotracers. Such nanomaterials can be built into the inorganic and organic parts of the structure, allowing combined and co-localized magnetic, optical and radiotracer contrast, and the possibility to image in different settings from early diagnosis to therapy.

Another example is responsive and triggered drug delivery vehicles that allow stealth and targeted transport of drugs that have severe side effects. Using structured nanomaterials such as liposomes, polymersomes and composite vesicles externally triggered release at the point of delivery can be assumed. Such drug delivery vehicles are part of a predicted theranostics approach in medicine, which aims to personalize medicine and combine image diagnostics and localized drug delivery of a spatially and temporally tailored dose adapted to the patient.

Making such advances available for clinical cooperation along the entire research and development chain from materials synthesis to clinical testing is mandatory. It cannot be achieved by one university actor alone, since knowledge and in particular expertise in characterization and measurement relevant for all parts have to be integrated in the design, characterization, and testing procedures from the start. The performance of biomedical nanomaterials relies strongly on the physical and chemical structuring of nanoparticles and vesicles. This requires spatially highly resolved imaging, scattering and chemical spectroscopy methods that for cost and complexity reasons should be made available to a large scientific community. Similarly, the biomedical imaging techniques for in vivo and in vivo studies have to be extended, upgraded and adapted to allow for multimodal imaging as well as combined imaging (hybrid systems) and actuation of drug delivery vehicles. In addition the cooperation with the MedUni Wien offers the unique possibility to test the developed nanomaterials in a clinical setting as well (bench to bedside).

Goal

NANOBILD attempts to integrate nanomedicine and to fill the gap in the necessary infrastructure to reach clinically relevant results. The consortium offers the possibility to develop, apply, and test in a pre-clinical and clinical setting such novel multimodal imaging probes which seems to allow early diagnosis and improved therapy.

Consortium

• BOKU: (Dr. Erik Reimhult) has a focus on nanobiotechnology and biomimetic materials with emphasis on its medical applications from early diagnosis and improved therapy. Projects with the MedUni Wien, which test the feasibility of different nanoparticles for multimodal imaging, are ongoing.
  
  
• UNI WIEN: (Dr. Manfred Ogris) develops molecular probes for cancer detection suitable for multimodal imaging, like fluorescence tomography-FMT, computed tomography-CT, and PET or SPECT.
  
  
• MedUni Wien: (DRs. Helbich, Hacker) has expertise in preclinical imaging using different hybrid techniques (like optics with MRI /US as well as SPECT MRI). In addition Dr. Hacker has together with his team developed different radiotracers for SPECT as well as PET.

Planned Infrastructure for pre-clinical Imaging (costs exclusive - VAT)

1. MedUni Wien for PIL: PET-MRI insert with x-nuclei (Bruker)   
   ca. 1,250.000
2. UNI WIEN: M3 MRI for hybrid imaging with optical probes (Aspect) 
   ca. 700.000
3. BOKU: Scanning and transmission electronic microscopy (Leica and FEI)   
   ca. 1,100.000
   

Cooperation partners

1. MedUni Wien: Univ. Profs. T. Helbich & M. Hacker, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy
2. UNI WIEN:  Univ.-Prof. Dr. Manfred Ogris, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
3. BOKU: Univ. Prof. Dr. Erik Reimhult, Department of Nanobiotechnology
   
   

Projects and Publications

• List in creation

Contact

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Helbich, MBA MSc
Universitätsklinik für Radiologie und Nuklearmedizin

Tel.: +43 (0)1 40400-48190,48930
E-Mail: thomas.helbich@meduniwien.ac.at

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