A strong biomedical research team organized by PKU professors has received funding of 50 million yuan ($7.9 million) from the Ministry of Science & Technology (MOST) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) to carry out a project on molecular imaging equipment.

Named "Small-animal Multi-modal Molecular Imaging Equipment and Key Technologies Research," the project falls under the National Large Scientific Equipment and Apparatus Development Program, which started in 2011 to support large equipment research projects which show promising marketing future.

The project launched on March 6 at Peking University. Attendees included Academician Guofan Jin of Tsinghua University, Academician Jia'er Chen of PKU and professors from PKU and all the 11 collaborating organizations. PKU Vice President Zhipan Wu, MOST Officer Xueti Wu and MOE Officer Chaozi Lei expressed their support at the ceremony.

Cancer has overtaken AIDS and tuberculosis as the number one major disease that causes death. In the next 10 years, 8.4 million people may die of cancer. Developing countries are estimated to spend up to $1 billion on treatment.

This new project will focus on the early diagnosis and early treatment with the help of molecular imaging equipment.

Professor Qiushi Ren , director of the Biomedical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, is the Technology Director of the project.

"We aims to develop an innovative multi-modal molecular imaging equipment with our own intelligent property,” said Ren. ”We will also develop an image analysis and processing software system."

According to Ren, the team will integrate X-ray tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) into one equipment. The second phase of the project is application: to use it to develop new drugs for major diseases and tumor-targeting molecular probes.

The equipment research team includes professors from PKU, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, South Medical School, Hebei University and PKU Founder Group. Experts in the application team are from Hospital 301, Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, PKU Health Science Center, PKU First Hospital and PKU Third Hospital.