The Imaging, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics Program (IDT) is a new HCI program focused on translating basic discoveries in cancer biology to clinically relevant advanced imaging techniques, diagnostics, drug delivery systems, unique therapeutic approaches, and clinical trials. A major IDT goal is to leverage the strengths of the University of Utah in genetics, pharmaceutics, and imaging along with infrastructure resources to make individualized oncology a reality. An IDT priority has been to increase collaboration with the multidisciplinary disease groups to better understand unmet clinical needs and to bring theoretical and preclinical projects to human applications. IDT is organized along its three thematic scientific strengths: Imaging research efforts include technology development, image-guided therapy, and the new and evolving discipline of molecular imaging. Several Program members are focused on using positron emission tomography imaging with unique radiopharmaceuticals to assess early response to therapeutic intervention. Several members are also involved with image-guided therapy technology development. Diagnostics research efforts include development of novel diagnostic strategies to improve the biologic characterization of cancer for therapeutic treatments and to provide important prognostic information to improve cancer care. Several individuals within the Program are interested in using modern molecular techniques to assess what population of individuals is at risk for developing a certain type of cancer and how particular cancers respond to targeted drug therapies. In addition, prognostic information regarding tumor behavior can be assessed. From these efforts in diagnostic biomarker development, defects in molecular pathways or targets can be identified. Therapeutics research efforts include the development of therapeutic strategies using novel drugs and drug delivery systems. These IDT members perform pre-clinical development, pharmacology, and other required studies to move their discoveries toward clinical applications. Members pursue new drugs and diagnostics through design, compound screening, computational modeling, and chemical synthesis. Members also focus on targeted delivery of anti-cancer agents to tumors and metastases using novel macromolecular drugs and new controlled-release and pro-drug techniques. This thematic group is essential to HCI's clinical trials effort. Led by John M. Hoffman, MD and Wallace Akerley, MD, the IDT Program includes 42 members from 15 departments and four colleges. IDT members include 14 PhDs, 20 MDs, and eight MD/PhDs. As of December 2008, members had $7.2M in peer-reviewed annual direct costs;56% was from NCI. The research efforts of IDT members have resulted in 466 publications, of which 17% were intra- and 15% were interprogrammatic collaborations. During 2008, the IDT Program had 36 investigator-initiated trials and 176 other trials;398 subjects were recruited to therapeutic trials and 3,479 subjects to other trials.
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