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‘Butterfly’ molecule continued from page 2
Florida State has also filed a patent application on the work.
Ma came to Florida State in 2013 from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of a strategic push by the university
to aggressively recruit and hire up-and-coming researchers in energy and materials science.
In addition to the faculty hires, the university has invested in top laboratory space and other resources needed to help
researchers make technology breakthroughs.
“This type of research is why we continue to invest in materials science and recruit faculty like Biwu Ma to Florida State,”
said Vice President for Research Gary K. Ostrander. “Making this area of research a priority shows why FSU is a preeminent
institution, and we look forward to what Biwu and our other scientists can accomplish in the years to come.”
MagLab scientists continued from page 2
Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, were able to acquire localized chemical signatures of metabolites from 125-microliter
volumes within the brain with high sensitivity and fidelity in six seconds.
Typical MRIs at hospitals or doctor’s offices measure around 1.5-3 tesla (the unit of magnetic field strength), while the 900
MHz measures a whopping 21.1 tesla, providing at least seven times the sensitivity.
“This very high field coupled with the RF pulse sequence design by our collaborators and homebuilt RF probes offer a unique
non-invasive way of evaluating stroke evolution and potential treatments,” Rosenberg said.
The team also sees exciting possibilities to use this technique to further investigate debilitating diseases.
“By evaluating spectral regions previously undetectable, we hope to fingerprint certain diseases, like ischemic stroke, so that
we can identify new characteristics that are specific to pathological conditions at the metabolic level in vivo,” Grant said.
“There is a lot of work to be done to identify these dynamic changes and decide when and how our treatments can be most
effective.”
Further research on metabolites using this technique could also be used for analysis of neurological disorders such as
dementia, schizophrenia, Lou Gehrig’s, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases.
In addition to Grant and Rosenberg, co-authors of the papers include CBE graduate student Jose Muniz and Chief
Scientist Lucio Frydman. Lead co-author Noam Shemesh, now at the Neuroscience programme at the Champaulimod
Center, and Jean-Nicholas Dumez contributed as researchers in Frydman’s laboratory in the Department of Chemical
Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
This highly collaborative effort was made possible through the MagLab’s users program and was recently funded through
the NSF-NHMFL User Collaboration Grants Program. Researchers intend to continue to characterize the metabolic profiles of
disease evolution and use such information to evaluate treatments, including stem cell therapies.
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