Professor Michael T. McMahon of Johns Hopkins University visit WIPM

In July 4, 2017, Dr. Michael T. McMahon from Johns Hopkins Department of Radiology and Radiological Science visited Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics (WIPM), Chinese Academy of Sciences at the invitation of Professor Xin Zhou, and gave us an academic report entitled "Organic MR Imaging Agents and Medical Applications: A Promising New Strategy with a Wide Range of Applications" in the 20th Tianjuan Spectrum Youth Forum.

Dr. McMahon received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Richmond and earned his Ph.D. in chemical physics from the University of Illinois. He was a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He  joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2006.Dr. McMahon is interested in developing new contrast agents for MRI and applying these to a variety of problems. This work includes contrast agent design, MRI pulse sequence development, and detailed image processing and analysis. Dr. McMahon has published many papers in top journals such as Nature Materials, Nano Letters, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Nature Communications and so on.

During the report, Dr. McMahon gave us a description of the relevant background theory for Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST), and a brief discussion of its wide application for molecular imaging. Meanwhile, Dr. McMahon introduced the work of his group. They have designed and synthesized different kinds of salicylic acid derivatives to detect their potential as CEST contrast agents. Besides, they have prepared nanocarriers based on dendrimers with salicylic acid modified on the surface, which can be used for monitoring convection enhanced delivery into U87 glioblastoma bearing mice and produced excellent characteristics as CEST agents. They also developed the “IM SHY” CEST contrast agents for detecting changes in tumor environment (e.g. pH, etc) through MR contrast.

Professor Feng Deng, Chun Tang, Jiwen Feng and other teachers and students participated in this report. There was an active discussion between them and Dr. McMahon at the end of the report.