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Christopher Contag Elected to Receive the 2006 Society for Molecular Imaging Achievement Award
Christopher H. Contag, PhD, Associate Professor of Neonatal & Developmental Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, Radiology, and Director of the Stanford Center for Innovation in In Vivo Imaging, is the winner of the 2006 Society for Molecular Imaging Achievement Award. This award is given to an individual who has made a fundamental discovery in the field of Molecular Imaging that has changed the direction of the field, or enabled new in vivo investigations that were not possible prior to their contribution. The goals of his optical and multi-modal imaging strategies are to develop tools that make the body essentially transparent for scientific discovery, and to use these tools to understand biology in the living body. The seminal papers by him and his colleagues reported the use of reporter genes in living mammals in 1995 and 1997. Dr. Contag's work pioneered the use of gene expression of luciferase and optical methods of detecting bioluminescence in the study of cancer. These studies have contributed significantly to how molecular imaging is used around the world to refine animal models of human biology and disease. The papers from his laboratory have revealed key aspects of stem cell engraftment and differentiation in vivo, demonstrated mechanisms of pathogenesis for a variety of infectious agents, shown how the host responds to pathogenic insults, studied immune monitoring of malignancy and uncovered regulatory pathways of control cell migration and development. Dr. Contag is also Co-Director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), was one of the principals in founding the SMI, and is a Past President of the Society. Once a year Members of the Society for Molecular Imaging are asked to vote from a list of candidates that have been nominated by the Council and Nominating Committee. The previous winners have been: in Dr. Juri Gelovani, 2002; Dr. Ralph Weissleder, 2003; Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, 2004; and Dr. David Piwnica-Worms, 2005.
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