Dr. Martin Pomper, M.D.
Dr. Martin Pomper is the William R. Brody Professor of Radiology, with other joint appointments, at Johns Hopkins University. He received his undergraduate, graduate (organic chemistry) and medical degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His postgraduate medical training was at Johns Hopkins and included internship (Osler Medical Service), residencies (diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine) and fellowship (neuroradiology). He is board-certified in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine and has been on the Radiology faculty at Johns Hopkins since 1996.
Dr. Pomper is currently the director of the Johns Hopkins Small Animal Imaging Resource and associate director of the In Vivo Cellular and Molecular Imaging Center, both funded by the National Cancer Institute to support molecular imaging research. In addition, he is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Translational Molecular Imaging and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence and the Positron Emission Tomography Center.
Dr. Pomper’s interests are in the development of new radiopharmaceuticals, optical probes and techniques for molecular imaging of cancer and central nervous system disease. His research group consists of chemists, physicists, molecular biologists and clinicians working together toward clinical molecular imaging. He is the immediate past Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Imaging and a past President of the Society of Nuclear Medicine’s Molecular Imaging Center of Excellence. He has numerous patents related to medical imaging, many of which have been licensed, as well as several imaging agents in clinical trials.
Steven M. Larson, M.D.
Dr. Steven Larson is Attending Physician, Department of Radiology, Member, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Professor, Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell University Medical Center. Dr. Larson is Chief of Nuclear Medicine Service, Vice Chairman for Radiology Research, Director of the Laurent and Alberta Gerschel Positron Emission Tomography Center, and Donna & Benjamin M. Rosen Chair in Radiology, Department of Radiology Memorial Hospital. He is also Laboratory Head, Molecular Pharmacology and Chemistry Program, and Co-Director of the Ludwig Trust Center for Immunotherapy of Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI). He is co-leader of the Imaging and Radiation Sciences Bridge Program (ImRas) Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Dr. Larson’s research focus is molecular imaging and targeted radiotherapy, particularly PET and radioantibody-targeted therapy in oncology. He is the author and co-author of more than 500 scholarly publications. Throughout his career he has emphasized translating laboratory discoveries and radiotracer development into clinical research and advanced nuclear medicine practice. Dr. Larson’s PET research has emphasized treatment response assessment, especially in prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, esophageal cancer, and breast cancer. Recently, he established a biomedical development probe group within the Larson Lab, SKI. Radiotracers have been developed which include radiolabeled drugs, and antibodies for targeting key molecules important in cancer progression and response. These probes are being used to explore pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of response at the tumor level in vivo through non-invasive imaging.
Dr. Larson is a fellow of both the American College of Nuclear Medicine and the American College of Radiology. He has been awarded numerous honors including the Wylie medal of the USFDA; the Wagner Lecture Medal of the Society of Nuclear Medicine; the Hevesy Awards of both the European and the US Society of Nuclear Medicine; the Sarabhai lecture-medal of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, India (1995); Radiology Researcher of the year (2004) and the Pendergrass Awards of the Radiologic Society of North America. Dr. Larson was the 2007 Academy of Molecular Imaging Distinguished Clinician Scientist. He is currently a life-member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, USA.
Matthias Nahrendorf, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Matthias Nahrendorf is an Assistant Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School. After completing medical school at Heidelberg University in Germany, he pursued Internal Medicine and Cardiology fellowships in Wuerzburg, followed by postdoctoral research at the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Currently Dr. Nahrendorf is the director of the Mouse Imaging Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital and a principal investigator at the Center for Systems Biology. The Nahrendorf laboratory uses the entire spectrum of modalities, including MR, nuclear, optical and hybrid imaging, to gain insight into inflammation and tissue repair at a systems level, and in an undisturbed in vivo environment. Imaging targets are enzymes, immune cells and molecular players with a central role in disease.
Ray Gibson, Ph. D.
Dr. Ray Gibson is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Imaging and Biology, and CSO of Gibson Imaging Apps, LLC.
Trained as a medicinal chemist, Dr. Gibson moved into studies on nicotinic cholinergic receptor as a post-doctoral fellow at Cornell then subsequently became research faculty at the George Washington University Medical Center (GWUMC). At GWUMC, Dr. Gibson used his background in medicinal chemistry and receptor studies and worked with Dr. William Eckelman in developing receptor-based diagnostic agents. These collaborators developed many of the concepts that are used today in the development of in vivo site-specific imaging agents. In particular, Dr. Gibson initiated studies on the muscarinic receptor, which eventually led to the development of 4-[123I]Iodo-QNB. This agent was used in clinical studies on muscarinic receptor concentrations in patients with dementias in collaboration with Dr. Dan Weinberger at the National Institute of Mental Health.
From 1998 – 2008 Dr. Gibson was a member of the imaging department at Merck Research Laboratory. During this time he participated in the development of radiotracers for the NMDA receptor, the angiotensin receptor (AT1: [123I][Sar,Ile]-AngII, [123I] L-735,286, and [11C] L-159,884) endothelin receptor (ETA: [123I]ET-1 and [11C]L-753,037), and CCK-A receptor (not published). In addition, he conducted the critical studies which lead to development of the NK1 receptor radiotracer ([18F]SPARQ) and the CB1 radiotracer.
Dr. Gibson co-founded the Society for Non-Invasive Imaging in Drug Development (SNIDD) in 1991. In 2002 SNIDD became a part of the Academy of Molecular Imaging and was recently absorbed into the World Molecular Imaging Society.
Dr. Gibson continues to lecture on the design of site-specific radiotracer for in vivo imaging as well as study design as related to uses of imaging in drug discovery and development.
Bala S. Krishnan, Ph.D.
Dr. Bala Krishnan operates a Preclinical-Imaging consultancy, which provides services for preclinical imaging biomarker assay development for drug discovery and development.
Prior to this, Dr. Krishnan was the Head of Preclinical Bio-Imaging in the Discovery Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology/Clinical Biomarkers at the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (BMS). He retired in 2008 after 27 years of service, which included 20 years of research in developing and delivering translational imaging biomarkers for drug discovery and development.
At BMS, Dr. Krishnan was primarily responsible for establishing state-of-the-art imaging facilities within and outside the vivarium. These facilities housed three MRIs, two micro PETs, a micro SPECT, two micro CTs, DEXA, and ultrasonography, autoradiography, optical imaging and bioluminescence systems. During his tenure at BMS, he helped establish the PET radio-ligand synthesis laboratory for synthesizing F18- labeled PET tracers for neuroscience and other drug discovery research area projects.
Dr. Krishnan’s group developed many pre-clinical imaging biomarkers for oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, neuroscience, and immunology. These efforts extensively involved the design and delivery of imaging biomarker assays for drug discovery and development. As appropriate, imaging biomarkers were translated to clinical trials for oncology, neuroscience and cardiovascular programs.
Highlights of Dr. Krishnan’s preclinical imaging experience include the development of imaging biomarkers using the above-mentioned imaging modalities for: tumor microcirculation using DCE-MRI; tumor glucose metabolism and tumor cell proliferation by PET; folate receptor expression levels by SPECT; antibodies labeled with fluorescent probes for receptor occupancy by optical imaging in oncology; brain-blood vessel dilation measurements by MR angiography for migraine; cerebral infarction for stroke by DW-MRI; brain receptor occupancy of neurotransmitters using F18 tracers for neuroscience diseases; CT bone morphology biomarkers for rheumatoid arthritis for immunology; and fat and liver lipid measurements by MR spectroscopy for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
Dr. Krishnan has extensive experience in the design of imaging protocols for Phase I clinical trials for oncology, neuroscience, immunology and cardiovascular programs. In addition to extensive experience in the application of nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance, fluorescence spectroscopy, and enzyme kinetics for delineating structure-activity relationships of metalloenzymes and drug-DNA interactions.