CEST MRI Guided Drug Delivery

The Department of Medical Imaging is pleased to have Guanshu Liu, PhD, presenting at our Grand Rounds on Wednesday, January 13th, at 12:00 pm in COM, Room 2117. Dr. Liu is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) has emerged as an attractive MRI contrast mechanism recently, which is generated simply by transferring the modulated magnetization from water-exchanging protons (OH, NH, or NH2) to their surrounding water molecules. Because many drugs or biological molecules carry a sufficient number of exchangeable protons, CEST enables the “label-free” MRI detection of many otherwise MRI invisible diamagnetic agents. This unique feature of CEST contrast can be utilized to achieve MRI-guided drug delivery without chemical labeling, a strategy called “natural labeling”. In this talk, Dr. Liu will show several examples of how unmodified drugs and drug carriers can be directly detected by CEST MRI via their inherently carried exchangeable protons. The potential role of this new MRI labeling strategy in image-guided drug delivery will be then discussed.