Imaging the Inflammatory Response, Vanderbilt University Study

A new 3-D view of the body’s response to infection - and the ability to identify proteins involved in the response - could point to novel biomarkers and therapeutic agents for infectious diseases. Vanderbilt University scientists in multiple disciplines combined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and imaging mass spectrometry to visualize the inflammatory response to a bacterial infection in mice. The techniques, described in Cell Host & Microbe and featured on the journal cover, offer opportunities for discovering proteins not previously implicated in the inflammatory response.