BENMD HOME

Welcome to the Bioengineering & Nanomedicine (BENMD) Program at the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Our mission is to improve the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases by making advanced imaging technology available to as many patients and researchers as possible worldwide.

TARGETED CONTRAST AGENTS

The BENMD Program has developed robust methods for synthesizing targeted contrast agents based on chromophores. Especially, Structure-Inherent Targeting (SIT) strategy plays an important role for image-guided surgical interventions by specifically visualizing target tissue with superior optical properties and by avoiding nonspecific uptake in normal background tissues.

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IMAGE-GUIDED DRUG DELIVERY

Armed with the ability to a priori engineer targeted contrast agents, we are interested in developing ideal theranostic nanocarriers that exhibit extended systemic circulation, rapid distribution, and excretion from normal tissues/organs via renal excretion after complete targeting of the target site, while also avoiding nonspecific uptake by the immune system.

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IMMUNO-ONCOLOGY IMAGING

Another mission of our lab is to create a novel medical imaging methodology and advance our understanding of immunology and immunotherapy. Our central focus has been to develop a new imaging technology to dissect the immune response in the context of cancer, allergy, and infectious diseases with the ultimate goal of translating the knowledge into clinical practice.

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BIOIMAGING DEVICES

Bioimaging devices are the enabling technology for successful preclinical and clinical research of our BENMD Program. We have invented multispectral and multiscale NIR fluorescence imaging systems that permit the simultaneous visualization of anatomy and function in real-time, with high sensitivity and no moving parts.

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SPACE MEDICINE

Our research team employs a two-fold strategy: actively monitoring real-time physiological changes and developing proactive strategies to prevent such changes in the space environment. This initiative not only advances our understanding of how the brain responds to space conditions but also safeguards the neurological well-being of astronauts during extended missions beyond Earth.

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CLINICAL TRANSLATIONS

Our final goal is to translate our imaging technology to the clinic. Based on the first principles of chemistry, engineering, and biology, we have defined the relationship among the key independent variables of targeted agents that dictate biodistribution and tissue-specific targeting in various animal models, and eventually in humans.

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