Center for Inflammation Imaging

Our center connects the Department of Radiology and the Heart and Vascular Institute, leveraging opportunities in fundamental science and clinical translation facilitated and informed by imaging. Understanding inflammation and immunity through imaging is our overarching theme. We focus on processes relevant in immuno-cardiology, vascular biology, neuroinflammation, rheumatology, aging, and immuno-oncology. These areas are connected by the immunological theme and the presence of vessels in all organ systems renders this work broadly applicable to virtually all diseases. This area is poised for major breakthroughs, as illustrated by the success of cancer immunotherapy. 

The center focuses on the multidisciplinary discovery of therapeutic and imaging targets, developing diagnostic and therapeutic tools such as affinity ligands for key inflammatory pathways. Rapid advances promise to expand the gamut of technologies this program will adopt. The center works on pathway and target identification, imaging agent, and therapeutics co-development, and pursues first-in-human studies in collaboration with other MGB entities. The ubiquity of the immune system and its and functions provides strong synergy for many disease areas. Once developed, imaging assays will likely prove applicable to virtually every disease and organ system.

 

News

2025-05-21:

The American College of Cardiology announced today the appointment of Matthias Nahrendorf, MD, PhD, as the new Editor-in-Chief of JACC: Basic to Translational Science.

2025-03-10:

Please mark your calendars: A highlight for the imaging interested cardiovascular community will happen on October 23rd 2025 at Assembly Row. The Gordon Center and i3 are jointly hosting the symposium "Frontiers in Cardiovascular Imaging: Innovations, Insights, and Impact". We are excited that Jim Brink, Peter Libby, Rob Gropler, Kory Lavine, David Sosnovik, Farouc Jaffer and Ahmed Tawakol are confirmed to present! Stay tuned for the final agenda, venue and registration.