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Four individually accomplished investigators, in four labs, are working toward one goal. The URMC is increasing collaboration among its scientists in order to move biomedical research further, faster. In the process, it’s winning support from the National Institutes of Health.

Deborah J. Fowell, PhD, is very familiar with Leishmania major, a particularly nasty parasite that infects the skin of twelve million people around the world, including more than seven hundred US soldiers who returned from Iraq with “Baghdad boil.” David J. Topham, PhD, is well known for all things-influenza. MinSoo Kim, PhD, is pretty handy at turning living T-cells different colors with beams of light. And James F. Miller, PhD, likes to sit in on cross-talk between T-cells and the molecules that help push them into action.

Most of the images that researchers use to help them understand the immune system are essentially snapshots. Despite advances in medical technology, the images don't show much activity, which limits researchers' understanding of how the immune system works.

A cell could seem like it's communicating with this other cell, but it's just there, says Deborah Fowell, University of Rochester associate professor of microbiology and immunology. That really tells us nothing about how they interact in the tissue.

But a study under way at the UR could lead to new imagining techniques that would allow clinicians to view the immune system in real time — while it's actively responding to an infection or fighting a disease.

Since the early days of Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch & Lomb, Rochester-area innovators have been making astounding discoveries in optics and imaging. Researchers at the University of Rochester are beginning a major study that will add to the region’s imaging expertise, while also advancing global understanding of how the body’s immune system works.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a five-year, $9 million Research Program Project Grant (PO1) to scientists in the School of Medicine and Dentistry to adapt and develop cutting-edge imaging techniques, allowing them to view the immune system while it is fighting infection and disease.