Major NIH grant lifts UF magnetic resonance research to new level

The University of Florida has won a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop new technology to capitalize on the research promise of some of the world’s most powerful magnets.

With a goal of improving the understanding, detection and treatment of disease, scientists at the Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Brain Institute of UF and their collaborators around the world plan to develop custom-designed hardware to increase the clarity of images of molecules, cells, tissue and animals produced through magnetic resonance technology.

The hardware – coils that can capture a magnetic signal from a specimen, thereby revealing information about its physical and chemical structure – also can be employed to discover the shapes of complex molecules through an “atomic fingerprint” of biochemical solutions. Such information can help guide the design of medications.

“This grant will enable us to develop all the ancillary technologies that will make our machines work better,” said Stephen J. Blackband, an associate professor of neuroscience and director of the McKnight Brain Institute's Advanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy Facility.

“The equipment comes with stock commercial coils, but they’re not always suitable for the kinds of experiments we want to do,” said Blackband, principal investigator for the five-year program project grant.

Magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy are noninvasive techniques that harness the ability of magnetic fields to cause nuclei within molecules and cells to line up and then spin, thereby generating detectable signals that can be translated into three-dimensional structures and even moving images. Through spectroscopy, scientists learn about the structure and movement of chemicals and biochemicals – an avenue of research particularly important to the design of new medications.

Health-care practitioners turn to magnetic resonance imaging as a diagnostic aid. Meanwhile, researchers use more powerful equipment to learn about basic mechanisms of biology or to assess the effectiveness of treatments under development in animals.

The McKnight Brain Institute is home to five magnetic resonance machines dedicated to research. The 11.7 and 17.6-tesla magnets, installed within the past 18 months, are in an elite international group of super-high magnetic field machines. Their tesla ratings translate into magnetic power hundreds of thousands of times stronger than the Earth’s.

“We need to make transmitters and receivers that are more sensitive than what has been previously available,” Blackband said. “The engineering becomes more difficult as the strength of the magnetic field increases.”

The grant provides funding for three core projects: designing relatively large coils for imaging small animals, creating microcoils for imaging single cells and developing methods for simultaneously collecting data from multiple biochemical samples. Those projects, in turn, are tied to a long list of biomedical research efforts at UF.

“We’re working with scientists here who need detailed images to further their research into treating brain tumors and injuries to the spinal cord or brain, and who are trying to better understand Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and many other conditions,” Blackband said. “Through this grant, our facility will become a resource for scientists elsewhere in the United States and around the world whose work also depends upon sophisticated imaging.”

Co-principal investigators for the grant are Jeffrey R. Fitzsimmons, a professor in the College of Medicine’s department of radiology, and Arthur S. Edison, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.

The scientists also will be reaching out to imaging and spectroscopy experts throughout the world for assistance in designing the technology. Collaborators include scientists at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory based in Tallahassee, Nottingham University in England, the University of Queensland in Australia, the University of Illinois and Hershey Medical Center at Penn State.

Investigators outside UF will book occasional machine time on the McKnight Brain Institute magnets and also receive assistance from UF staff in carrying out their research. Among the outside projects are efforts to create a detailed atlas of the mouse brain and to develop an artificial pancreas as an approach to treating diabetes.

Backed by a separate $854,000 grant received recently from NIH, Fitzsimmons also is working to improve human spinal cord imaging. He is developing what’s known as a phased array coil, through which data will be collected from multiple smaller coils rather than a single larger one. The signals will be combined to produce an image with better sensitivity than a single coil.

“Through magnetic resonance, we can look at structure, function, mechanics and metabolism,” Blackband said. “That’s quite unusual for any one methodology to be able to do. And now, through our grants, we are going to be able to develop the technology needed to take advantage of higher field strengths and disseminate that knowledge and techniques throughout the community.”