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The National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year $1.4m renewal grant to the Medical College of Wisconsin. It will fund continued development of MRI contrast agent methods to study angiogenesis in brain tumors. The National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year $1.4m renewal grant to the Medical College of Wisconsin. It will fund continued development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent methods to study angiogenesis – the rapid new growth of blood vessels – in brain tumors.

Kathleen Schmainda, PhD, associate professor of radiology is the ongoing principal investigator. This is the second successful renewal of the grant that was first awarded in 2003.

"Patients with brain tumors are in desperate need of new therapies," says Dr. Schmainda. "Recent clinical studies combining anti-angiogenic agents with conventional therapies have shown significant improvements in patient response, leading to the first FDA-approved anti angiogenic agents. Yet, to fully realize the promise of combined therapies, we need non-invasive methods that can answer critical questions about how these agents work and how to combine them optimally."

Study findings could improve the application and interpretation of MRI dynamic contrast methods to evaluate tumor angiogenesis and combined therapeutic strategies for the benefit of brain tumor patients.

Dr. Schmainda, who holds a secondary appointment in biophysics, is a faculty member of the Medical College's Functional Imaging Research and Biotechnology and Bioengineering Centers.

She received her BSE in biomedical engineering from Marquette University in 1986, MA and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in1989, and Ph.D. degree in medical engineering from Harvard-MIT, in 1993. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in MRI at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown, Mass. in 1995.