Stravitz‑Sanyal liver institute at VCU opens Clinical Research Imaging Center to advance liver disease treatments

By
Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health

A new imaging center at the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at Virginia Commonwealth University will help researchers develop better treatments for liver disease and related health problems that affect millions of patients worldwide.

The $30 million Clinical Research Imaging Center brings advanced scanners, chemistry labs and clinical research into one location in the VA Bio+Tech Park in downtown Richmond. The center's singular PET/CT scanner is one of only a handful in the country dedicated to research. It also offers advanced MRI machines, equipment for quantitative analysis and labs for making safe imaging tracers.

Officials from VCU and VCU Health joined industry leaders to celebrate the center's opening June 30, with tours that spotlighted the new Siemens Quadra PET/CT scanner known as the Biograph Vision Quadra. It can scan the entire body in one minute and is one of only about 20 in use in the United States.

The Clinical Research Imaging Center will support research focused on some of today's most significant health challenges, including metabolic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, as well as cancer and inflammation. These conditions represent growing public health concerns, and they are major priorities for pharmaceutical and biotechnology investment.

"Our new center is a transformative step for liver and metabolic disease research. By combining cutting-edge imaging, radiochemistry and clinical trial capability in one place, the center will allow us to move discoveries from the bench to people far more quickly and with far greater precision," said Arun Sanyal, M.D., the Stravitz-Sanyal institute's director and a hepatologist at VCU Health.

The Clinical Research Imaging Center's combination of technology and disease-focused expertise will make it a go-to facility for international companies interested in drug development for hepatology and metabolic conditions, Sanyal said. The center hopes to attract industry-sponsored trials as well as government grants for researchers seeking faster, clearer ways to develop imaging biomarkers, study disease mechanisms and test new medicines that treat liver diseases and cancers.

"For patients and for investigators, our new imaging center creates the infrastructure we need to translate scientific insight into safer, more effective treatments and, ultimately, to prevent disease," Sanyal said.

Liver disease is growing in the United States and around the globe. About 1 in 3 people worldwide has fatty liver disease, one of the most common liver ailments. In the U.S., more than 40 million people have diabetes, and more than 100 million have obesity or prediabetes. These conditions raise the chance of serious liver problems, including scarring, liver failure and cancer. Treatment and therapy options for both liver and metabolic conditions are limited.

"We look at the whole human body through the lens of the liver," Sanyal said. "We will use the imaging core not only to understand what's happening with the liver but to also answer, with unprecedented power, new questions about other organs as well."

The Clinical Research Imaging Center is staffed with expertise in radiology and radiochemistry to support investigator-initiated studies, industry-sponsored trials, precision-medicine projects and cross-disciplinary innovation. By creating a translational research platform, the center aims to accelerate scientific discovery and strengthen VCU's national leadership in imaging-driven precision medicine and metabolic disease research.

Researchers using the center's equipment and staff will be able to:

• Develop and validate novel imaging biomarkers.
• Study disease mechanisms in humans.
• Conduct first-in-human imaging studies.
• Evaluate therapeutic response and drug distribution.
• Advance precision-medicine approaches across multiple diseases.

One of the industry partners at the opening was Lars Johansson, CSO of Antaros Medical, a Danish clinical imaging firm with deep expertise in drug development and disease biology which plans to collaborate with the liver institute. "The center offers a unique world class infrastructure and expertise environment that will enable precise, translational research and accelerate the development of better therapies for patients," he said.