This proposal targets two important areas of human health through the development of an innovative technology that will improve the efficacy of chemotherapy for cancer patients, and also for antibiotic treatments for patients with septic shock therapy. Biodynamic imaging, a method to detect intracellular motion developed under a previous NSF grant, has the potential to fill this need. This project will extend biodynamic imaging to measure cell signals in response to immunotherapies as well as antibiotics for bacterial infections.
Biodynamic imaging uses low-coherence digital holography to detect intracellular Doppler signals from diverse cellular motions inside in vitro and/or ex vivo living tissue. Cellular motions are endogenous and provide a functional imaging approach to measure the pharmacodynamic response of patient tumors or infected tissues to treatment. The long-range goal of this project is to establish biodynamic imaging as the premier phenotyping technology for the selection of personalized medical treatment when drug resistance is the principal barrier to effective treatment.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
