Webinar Overview
The advent of responsive contrast agents and nanoparticle drug delivery systems (nano-DDSs) is opening new pathways to understanding pathophysiology using MRI. Nanoparticles have for many years been investigated as possible MRI contrast agents.
Nano-carriers for DDSs can contain multiple functional elements, such as therapeutic drugs, MRI contrast agents, fluorescent or luminescent dyes, and radioisotopes, without serious changes to the particle kinetics/dynamics. The development of such multifunctional nano-DDSs and imaging has accordingly become a subject of widespread research.
Dr. Aoki summarizes his research into nano-DDS-based contrast agents for cancer and neuroscience.
On Demand Session
Speaker
Dr. Ichio Aoki
Senior Investigator,
Institute for Quantum Medical Science (iQMS), National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST), Chiba-City, Japan
Ichio Aoki initially learned NMR science from Dr. Kohji Fukuda (physics/physiology) in 1993-1994, and received a MSc for quantitative brain perfusion MRI, working with Dr. Chuzo Tanaka (neurosurgery, 1996) in Kyoto, Japan. He also received a Ph.D. for research and development of manganese-enhanced MRI (MEMRI) with Dr. Tanaka in 1999 (Kyoto, Japan).
A visiting fellow position (2000-2002) in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at NIH (Bethesda, USA) was focused on brain functional and contrast-agent research using high-field MRI with Dr. Alan P Koretsky. In the autumn of 2006, Dr. Aoki moved to the Molecular Imaging Center, National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS; Chiba, Japan) as a leader of the Imaging Physics Team (2007-2011) and the Multimodal Molecular Imaging Team (2011-2015) at NIRS. In 2016, the NIRS was integrated to the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science (QST), Japan. Dr. Aoki is a senior investigator of the Institute for Quantum Medical Science (iQMS) and a group leader of the Functional and Molecular Imaging Group (2016-present) at QST.
He has focused on finding something new in preclinical MRI. His interest began with manganese-enhanced MRI and extended to the development of nanoparticle-based functional contrast agents for neuroscience and cancer research.