Cancer imaging research gets $10m boost

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Centre has given the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute a $10 million grant to help build a $20 million cancer imaging research centre in South Boston's Innovation District, the Boston Herald reports.

Dana-Farber plans to develop new molecular imaging probes at the Molecular Cancer Imaging Facility, for doctors to better diagnose, treat and monitor cancer in patients.

According to Mass High Tech, the facility will let physicians better diagnose and characterise cancer, choose targeted therapies, monitor treatment efficacy, and improve the outcomes of adult and paediatric patients with cancer, according to a press release about the award.

The expansion may create more than 100 construction jobs and 15 jobs to operate the facility.

“Molecular imaging holds tremendous promise for accelerating drug discovery by allowing more rapid assessment of drug efficacy in preclinical and clinical settings,” Boston.com quotes Barrett Rollins, Dana-Farber's chief scientific officer, as saying.

“Moreover, molecular imaging will play a key role in the delivery of personalised medicine, by allowing clinicians to determine whether specific drugs are effective in days instead of months.”