Mass spectrometry (MS) imaging has emerged as a revolutionary method for molecular mapping of tissue. The depth of spatial and molecular information from MS imaging has immense diagnostic, prognostic and mechanistic value for basic, translational, and clinical cancer research. We propose to establish a state-of-the art MS imaging center that will serve and support cancer researchers throughout Texas, working on ovarian, brain, breast, pancreatic, cervical and thyroid cancer, among others. Conventional tissue biopsy is based on the evaluation of morphological features of the tissue by a trained pathologist, a subjective process. In contrast, hundreds of clearly defined molecular features diag...

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Mass spectrometry (MS) imaging has emerged as a revolutionary method for molecular mapping of tissue. The depth of spatial and molecular information from MS imaging has immense diagnostic, prognostic and mechanistic value for basic, translational, and clinical cancer research. We propose to establish a state-of-the art MS imaging center that will serve and support cancer researchers throughout Texas, working on ovarian, brain, breast, pancreatic, cervical and thyroid cancer, among others. Conventional tissue biopsy is based on the evaluation of morphological features of the tissue by a trained pathologist, a subjective process. In contrast, hundreds of clearly defined molecular features diagnostic of disease are captured digitally in MS-Imaging. Just as the measurement of a panel of biomarkers from blood has radically improved the diagnosis of heart disease, the discrete measurements made by MS-Imaging have the potential to transform cancer management and advance fundamental cancer research. Dr. Eberlin’s MasSpec Pen is in clinical testing to establish surgical margins during cancer tissue removal. The goals include: (1) Development of a high performance MS imaging center which will expand opportunities for diagnostic, prognostic, and mechanistic cancer research. (2) Enable MS imaging for tissue and cellular analysis with emphasis on robust sample preparation methods, advanced biostatistical methods for data analysis, and optimization of study design. (3) Promote the development of new technology that will advance the scope of MS imaging applied to cancer research, via methods to gather molecular fingerprints, to increase spatial resolution and sensitivity, and to enable sophisticated bioinformatics. The projects envisioned range from fundamental mechanistic studies for targeted analysis of molecular markers in cell lines to high impact clinical investigations of novel molecular markers of disease progression and treatment response in patient tissue samples.

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