Michigan State University has been awarded a National Institutes of Health $6.7 million grant to build a new facility to develop new imaging agents and treatments for diseases, including cancer, that afflict both humans and large animals.

"The new Large Animal Facility for Imaging and Image-guided Therapies will be one of the few such medical diagnostic facilities in the world," said project leader Anna Moore, assistant dean for the MSU College of Human Medicine and director of the Precision Health Program, adding: “This bridges our existing outstanding basic science and small animal imaging infrastructure, and our human imaging capabilities.”

The facility, expected to open on the East Lansing campus in 2024, “will accelerate the translation of our research in many diseases,” Moore said. “It will better link fundamental discoveries and clinical research — bench to bedside. This will foster innovation and scientific advances, creating new ways to diagnose and personalize the treatment of diseases with a real impact on human lives.”

The facility is part of a larger program in precision health that will lead to targeted therapies with image guidance.

The heart of the facility will be a highly sophisticated imaging scanner provided by Siemens Healthineers that combines two types of scanners, a PET, or positron emission tomography, with an MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging. The investigators from MSU and other institutions will be able to make significant advances in diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, including those with the highest mortality rates — cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Read full story at MSU Today.