Events

In Vivo Multifunctional EPR Profiling of Tumor Microenvironment

About the Speaker: Dr. Valery V. Khramtsov is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, and founding Director of “In vivo Multifunctional Magnetic Resonance (IMMR) center”, West Virginia University. He received his M.S. (1980) from Novosibirsk State University, and Ph.D. (1986) in chemical physics from the Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion, Novosibirsk, Russia, where he served then as Head of Biophysical Group in 1991-2001. Since 2001, Dr. Khramtsov is Investigator at Dorothy M. Davis Heart & Lung Research Institute, the Ohio State University (OSU), since 2009 he is Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, the OSU, and since 2015 –Professor, WVU. He has authored over 160 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters dealing with free radical biomedicine and magnetic resonance applications to chemistry and biology.

About the Webinar: A key role of the tumor microenvironment (TME) in cancer progression and therapy is increasingly appreciated. Among important physiological parameters of the TME in solid tumors are tissue hypoxia, acidosis, high reducing capacity and elevated concentrations of intracellular glutathione (GSH), a major intracellular redox buffer. Recently inorganic phosphate (Pi) has been identified as a new factor of importance in tumorigenesis. Noninvasive in vivo pO₂, pH, Pi, GSH and redox assessment provide unique insights into biological processes in TME, tools for pre-clinical screening of anti-cancer drugs and optimizing TME-targeted therapeutic strategies. We developed a unique set of nitroxide and trityl paramagnetic probes for the concurrent in vivo assessment of these TME parameters using EPR spectroscopy and imaging. The multifunctional EPR profiling of TME in various animal models of cancer, including that during tumor progression to malignancy and tumor treatment will be discussed.