Crump scientists have created a unique laboratory for interdisciplinary investigations across mathematical, engineering, physical, biological, and medical sciences. We draw in the people who do the best science, who share our vision, no matter where they are. Strong partnerships with the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center (JCCC), the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology (DMMP), and the Broad Stem Cell Research Center (BSCRC), provide links to pass our innovations into the hands of faculty and students who will implement our discoveries to improve the lives of patients and people everywhere.
In January 2009, the Crump Institute moved into the CNSI building. The Crump Institute and CNSI share a common place to work together in achieving a mission of integrated science and technology from across the campus. Both the Crump Institute and CNSI bring together a mix of engineering, mathematical, physical, biological and medical sciences. The CNSI occupies about 150,000 ft2 of the building with a systems mission that reaches from materials, electronic, energy and molecular sciences to biological and medical sciences, with a large array of high technology cores and university—industry programs. CNSI has a state-mandated commitment to technology transfer for commercialization.
The Crump Institute continues to enjoy a close collegial association with the JCCC. The JCCC supports research through the Cancer Center's Cancer Molecular Imaging Program area, whose co-Directors are Crump members Anna Wu (preclinical) and Johannes Czernin (clinical). In addition, the JCCC supports a Small Animal Imaging Shared Resource that is incorporated into the Crump Institute's Preclinical Imaging Technology Center, directed by Jason Lee and in Clinical Molecular Imaging in the Ahmanson Biological Imaging Division of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology directed by Johannes Czernin.
The Cancer Molecular Imaging program brings together 17 faculty members from JCCC, of which nine are members of the Crump Institute. Interactions and collaborations are fostered in several areas by the integration of the JCCC members into the program areas of the Crump Institute. Research themes include: the development of imaging instrumentation and analytical tools; development of novel molecular imaging approaches including new probes and tracers; non-immunogenic reporter gene imaging systems; and preclinical imaging models including transgenic mouse models of cancer. Important new initiatives have been established on imaging immune responses and responses to immunotherapy.
The JCCC in providing significant support to the Small Animal Imaging Shared Resource, in turn provides state-of-the-art preclinical imaging instrumentation and extensive training to Cancer Center Members. The Crump Institute and the JCCC Cancer Molecular Imaging Program co-sponsor a seminar series, with monthly lectures presented in the CNSI auditorium.
The Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology offers an opportunity for gifted students, basic and clinical scientists to fulfill a vision together in exploring the molecular and biological mechanisms that regulate cellular and organ functions, in identifying and understanding the molecular errors of disease using in vitro and in vivo molecular diagnostics, and in developing the pharmacological means to correct these errors. Remarkable scientific discoveries and revolutionary technological innovations are occurring as biological, physical, engineering and clinical sciences come together in our Department to explore both the mechanisms by which cells are programmed from the genome to construct protein based cell circuits and the functions they perform, as well as the inter-cellular networks that form organ systems and the whole organism. This systems biology view of biological organization and function also contains the framework for the processes by which cells are re-programmed to gain and lose functions in the developmental processes of disease. This combination of new perspectives, new technologies and new scientific discoveries is having a tremendous impact on the way we think about and perform science today, and will have an even greater impact on biology and medicine in the future. Molecular and Medical Pharmacology is the home department for the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, and the Ahmanson Biological Imaging Division that contains our Nuclear Medicine and PET/CT clinical service. This combination of resources provides a novel environment to bring together faculty and students with diversity in their professional backgrounds and interests, yet with commonality in their ambitions and goals. Our programs value the transfer of knowledge and technology to the public and benefit through university-industry partnerships, while exposing students to both cultures.
The BSCRC's mission is to explore the scientific and medical potential that is emerging from research on adult and embryonic stem cells across campus departments. Research on stem cells holds tremendous promise. One objective is to facilitate basic scientific inquiries of adult and human embryonic stem cells towards future clinical applications. However, there are significant challenges in the research to overcome before the promise of stem cells can be fulfilled. Two areas where Crump faculty apply their talents are scalability and improvement of our molecular understanding of the triggers that control differentiation choice. Crump Institute cell biologists, bioengineers, chemists, materials scientists, and physicians are joined in an effort to develop novel technologies to support stem cell research.
This program brings together scientists and students in biological, physical, engineering and medical sciences as another aspect of our effort to integrate systems biology, nsbccnanotechnology, integrated microfluidics, and molecular imaging. It is the end result of a novel research and educational program formed between UCLA, Caltech and the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle known as the Alliance for NanoSystems Biology which provides the opportunity for research and educational activities between these three institutions.
We have established a strategic partnership with ISB, a visionary and integrating force in biology, under the leadership of world-renowned biologist, Dr. Leroy Hood. Our systemsbio academic collaboration focuses on fundamental problems in the systems biology of disease, and technologies to accelerate and expand our knowledge of developmental processes of disease along with developing new in vitro and in vivo molecular diagnostics and therapeutics.
This center, forming the third cycle CCNE Program at Stanford, is a consortium with expertise and infrastructure to support the growing field of cancer nanomedicine. Its two scientific thematic focus areas are: i) predicting and monitoring cancer therapy response in lung cancer and ii) merging of nano-based in vitro and in vivo diagnostic strategies as well as nano-based imaging for earlier cancer detection and prognostication for prostate cancer. CCNE-TD investigators will utilize nanotechnology to measure changes in cancer patterns via 1) imaging though cancer-triggered-self-assembling as well as dis-assembling nanoparticles and 2) in the serum using magneto-nano sensors. We believe that measuring molecular level changes is critical to the problem of earlier cancer detection and monitoring response to therapies with both the ex vivo diagnostic nanosensor technologies and the in vivo imaging technologies.
The City of Hope National Medical Center and the Beckman Research Institute, in Duarte, CA, provide an interdisciplinary and translational research setting. In partnership with cohinvestigators at City of Hope, Crump faculty members are collaborating on clinical studies of a novel engineered antibody for imaging prostate cancer in patients.