Taking MRIs to the Next Level

More than 25 million patients in the United States undergo magnetic resonance imaging procedures annually, and while MRIs are valuable tools, there also can be dangers. In almost one-quarter of those procedures, doctors use contrast agents, which are substances induced into the body to increase its sensitivity to the scans. Contrast agents can make it easier for doctors to deliver a diagnosis, but the most effective and commonly used contrast agent, the metal gadolinium, is toxic.

Work by Rice University doctoral student Balaji Sitharaman may soon provide a solution, however. Sitharaman has created new forms of contrast agents by encasing gadolinium inside fullerenes—single molecules of carbon atoms arranged in spherical or tube-shaped structures. By enclosing the gadolinium inside the carbon molecules, Sitharaman has simultaneously reduced the toxicity of the metal to nearly zero while boosting its effectiveness as a contrast agent as much as 100 times. Sitharaman’s class of contrast agents could, for the first time, allow magnetic resonance imaging of individual cells.

Lon Wilson, professor of chemistry and Sitharaman’s PhD advisor, says Sitharaman is one of the best graduate students he has worked with in his 30 years at Rice. “He’s already produced six peer-reviewed manuscripts that have been published or accepted by first-rank journals,” Wilson notes, “and it’s likely that he’ll double that by the time he graduates.”

In recognition of Sitharaman’s work, the Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas has selected him as one of two winners of the 2004 George Kozmetsky Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Nanotechnology. The Kozmetsky Award, the first of its kind offered to U.S. graduate students working on nanotechnology, includes a $5,000 prize. Competition for the awards is fierce, but a Rice student has won one of the two awards in each of the first two years they have been offered. The other recipient this year is University of Texas–Austin student Aaron Saunders.

“I’m grateful and honored by this recognition by the Nanotech Foundation of Texas,” Sitharaman says, “and I look forward to the benefit of our research to diagnostic medicine.”

The Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas is an initiative funded by private individuals, corporations, and other foundations to accelerate research in nanotechnology by increasing the visibility of nanotechnology research, expanding research funding, and recruiting the best nanotechnology researchers from around the world to Texas.

—Jade Boyd