Director of Multinuclear MR Imaging, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
My research interests are focused on the development of advanced MR imaging methods and their translation into clinical practice for precision-personalized medicine and discovery science. I am particularly interested in probing non-invasively metabolic pathways in the brain to investigate neurological disorders, mental illness and brain tumors. These conditions are characterized by a disease cycle that connects genetic mutations, metabolic alterations and epigenetic modifications. MR imaging and MR spectroscopic imaging provide a unique window to probe the metabolic link between genetic mutations and epigenetic modifications, which is absolutely necessary to understand diseases and develop new treatments. MR-based metabolic imaging can be used with no limitations on repeat scans—which is important for human brain research, where in-vivo biopsies are rarely performed and blood or CSF sampling is often inconclusive.
My laboratory has produced a series of technical innovations for fast high-spatial resolution whole-brain human imaging with increased signal-to-noise ratio that allow more precise quantification of neurometabolic alterations. These involve imaging the neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate in bipolar disease and schizophrenia or the major antioxidant glutathione in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. My laboratory was the first to show that isocitrate dehydrogenase mutations can be non-invasively genotyped in glioma patients by imaging the oncometabolite 2-hydroxyglutarate. Imaging of metabolites like these allows for improved diagnosis and staging of patients, as well as pharmacodynamic-pharmacokinetic treatment studies. Quantum leaps in the performance of imaging methodology can be used clinically for individualized image-guided therapy and to accelerate clinical trials of novel targeted treatments.