Friday Colloquium Series - Shawn Chen, 2/24/12 at 11:15 a.m.

FEBRUARY 24, 2012 11:15 a.m. in 1003 Silver Host: Yingkai Zhang, NYU Chemistry

Shawn Chen National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) Laboratory of Molecular Imaging and Nanomedicine (LOMIN) Chief and Senior Investigator Editor-In-Chief, Theranostics Chen Group Research Title: Multimodality Molecular Imaging of Response to Cancer Therapeutics Abstract: Molecular imaging may be defined as the tissue-specific visualization and quantification of functional physiologic and molecular events in living organisms. Since its conception about 15 years ago, molecular imaging has experienced exciting technical development and major applications in various research and clinical fields, including the elucidation of biological processes, early detection of diseases, monitoring therapy response, and drug discovery/development, just to name a few. This talk will focus on different imaging modalities in molecular profiling of cancer in its earliest possible stage as well as the ability of early prediction of various chemotherapeutics and biological therapies. Theranostic nanoparticle platforms that have both imaging and therapy components to pinpoint the fates of both the delivery vehicle and the cargo, as well as the treatment efficacy will also be discussed.   Biography: Dr. Chen was born in 1974 in China. He received his B.S. in 1993 and M.S. in 1996 from Nanjing University, China. He then moved to the United States and obtained his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Idaho in 1999. After two quick postdocs at Syracuse University and Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the University of Southern California as an Assistant Professor of Radiology. He then moved to Stanford University in 2004. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and in the summer of 2009, he joined the intramural research program of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) as a tenured senior investigator and lab chief. He has joint appointments with the NIH Clinical Center and National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST). He is also a guest professor of over 10 universities in China. Dr. Chen has published over 300 papers and numerous books. He is the editor-in-chief a newly launched journal Theranostics and sits on the editorial board of over 10 peer-reviewed journals and is a regular reviewer for over 50 journals. He is the President-Elect of the Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine (CASNM). He is also a member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council (RPSC) Board of Directors. His lab specializes in synthesizing molecular imaging probes for positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), optical (bioluminescence, fluorescence and Raman), contrast enhanced ultrasound, photoacoustic imaging as well as multimodality imaging. There is a special emphasis on high sensitivity nanosensors for biomarker detection and theranostic nanomedicine for imaging, gene and drug delivery, and monitoring of treatment.