Center for Inflammation Imaging

Our center connects the Department of Radiology and the Heart and Vascular Institute, leveraging opportunities in fundamental science and clinical translation facilitated and informed by imaging. Understanding inflammation and immunity through imaging is our overarching theme. We focus on processes relevant in immuno-cardiology, vascular biology, neuroinflammation, rheumatology, aging, and immuno-oncology. These areas are connected by the immunological theme and the presence of vessels in all organ systems renders this work broadly applicable to virtually all diseases. This area is poised for major breakthroughs, as illustrated by the success of cancer immunotherapy. 

The center focuses on the multidisciplinary discovery of therapeutic and imaging targets, developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools such as affinity ligands for key inflammatory pathways. Rapid advances promise to expand the gamut of technologies this program will adopt. The center works on pathway and target identification, imaging agent, and therapeutics co-development, and pursues first-in-human studies in collaboration with other MGB entities. The ubiquity of the immune system and its and functions provides strong synergy for many disease areas. Once developed, imaging assays will likely prove applicable to virtually every disease and organ system.