Earning a doctorate and practicing veterinary medicine equipped Dr. Akers with knowledge in anatomy, physiology and diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases. He sought to further advance my research training by completing a biomedical engineering education emphasizing optical contrast agents and biomedical imaging. The complex interplay of signaling events in cancer biology is multidimensional, requiring a broad and flexible comprehension in approaching molecular imaging of cancer. Dr. Akers' career goal is to combine his education and experience as veterinarian and biological imaging scientist to combat cancer and other diseases through developing novel preclinical and translational molecular imaging approaches and improving our ability to diagnose, stage and treat disease processes. His work at Washington University is achieving this goal through development of new molecular imaging agents and detection strategies to illuminate biochemical and cellular events in vivo using non-invasive or minimally invasive detection technologies. His experience with many animal models of cancer and expertise in optical and multimodal molecular imaging has opened opportunities for innovative and collaborative biomedical research across disparate fields including tumor immunology, gene therapy and theranostic nanotechnology. Dr. Akers has therefore driven himself, through multiple collaborative studies, becoming an expert in cancer biology, animal and human. As the Assistant Director of Optical Imaging Shared Resource (OISR) and faculty member in the Optical Radiology Laboratory (ORL), he provides specialized expertise to many research programs at Washington University School of Medicine. By enabling him to continue research without disruption from inevitable changes grant funding, the NIH Specialist Award will provide continuity and autonomy to develop new imaging strategies to better accomplish the goals of funded projects and acquire preliminary data to support new research directions in cancer imaging and therapy, accelerating the Washington University School of Medicine cancer research enterprise.

Public Health Relevance

My career goals combine my experience as veterinarian and biological engineer in developing novel preclinical and translational molecular imaging approaches to diagnose, stage and treat cancer and other diseases. My work supports many research programs at Washington University School of Medicine, from my foundations in the ORL and the OISR. The overarching goals of my work is to enhance detection of molecular events in living systems, enabling visualization of biology in its native environment, then translate this information to clinical applications in human medicine.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Project #
5R50CA211481-06
Application #
9984311
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZCA1)
Program Officer
Menkens, Anne E
Project Start
2016-09-19
Project End
2021-08-31
Budget Start
2020-09-01
Budget End
2021-08-31
Support Year
6
Fiscal Year
2020
Total Cost
Indirect Cost
Name
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
067717892
City
Memphis
State
TN
Country
United States
Zip Code
38105
Fontana, Francesca; Ge, Xia; Su, Xinming et al. (2017) Evaluating Acetate Metabolism for Imaging and Targeting in Multiple Myeloma. Clin Cancer Res 23:416-429
Mondal, Suman B; Gao, Shengkui; Zhu, Nan et al. (2017) Optical See-Through Cancer Vision Goggles Enable Direct Patient Visualization and Real-Time Fluorescence-Guided Oncologic Surgery. Ann Surg Oncol 24:1897-1903
Yan, Heping; Kapoor, Vaishali; Nguyen, Kim et al. (2016) Anti-tax interacting protein-1 (TIP-1) monoclonal antibody targets human cancers. Oncotarget 7:43352-43362
Zhou, Haiying; Yan, Ying; Ee, Xueping et al. (2016) Imaging of radicals following injury or acute stress in peripheral nerves with activatable fluorescent probes. Free Radic Biol Med 101:85-92
Soodgupta, Deepti; Zhou, Haiying; Beaino, Wissam et al. (2016) Ex Vivo and In Vivo Evaluation of Overexpressed VLA-4 in Multiple Myeloma Using LLP2A Imaging Agents. J Nucl Med 57:640-5
Som, Avik; Raliya, Ramesh; Tian, Limei et al. (2016) Monodispersed calcium carbonate nanoparticles modulate local pH and inhibit tumor growth in vivo. Nanoscale 8:12639-47
He, Shawn; Tourkakis, George; Berezin, Oleg et al. (2016) Temperature-dependent shape-responsive fluorescent nanospheres for image-guided drug delivery. J Mater Chem C Mater 4:3028-3035
Sun, Jessica; Miller, Jessica P; Hathi, Deep et al. (2016) Enhancing in vivo tumor boundary delineation with structured illumination fluorescence molecular imaging and spatial gradient mapping. J Biomed Opt 21:80502
Ringhausen, Elizabeth; Wang, Tylon; Pitts, Jonathan et al. (2016) Evaluation of Dynamic Optical Projection of Acquired Luminescence for Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Large Animals. Technol Cancer Res Treat 15:787-795