Christopher Contag, PhD, is director of the Molecular Biophotonics and Imaging Laboratory (MBIL) at Stanford University, and he is overseeing research that has the potential to revolutionize the practice of pathology. Contag and his colleagues are developing innovative imaging techniques that work with optical and acoustical technologies, nanotechnology, and contrast agents to create a kind of “virtual pathology” or “point-of-care pathology.” It is a fascinating case of a variety of biomedical and information technologies coming together to enable new approaches with the potential to dramatically affect diagnostics and impact patient outcomes.
Says Dr. Contag on his website: “The methods developed and used by our group can simultaneously reveal the nuances and the overall picture of cellular and molecular processes….Using these approaches, we can rapidly assess the effects of antineoplastic therapies, antibiotics, or antiviral drugs, revealing possible modes of action.…One of our scientific goals is to develop tools that make the body essentially transparent for scientific discovery, and to use these tools to understand how pathogens cause disease and how the host organism responds to these pathogens, as well as how the immune system monitors cell transformation in cancer, and the regulatory networks that control cell migration and development.” Dr. Contag and his team are also working with molecular biomarkers that attach to cancerous lesions to provide information about disease. Learn more about Dr. Contag’s work and its intriguing applications in a comprehensive article published in the New York Times.
