MOLECULAR IMAGING
RESEARCH LAB
Research overview
We are a multidisciplinary research team. The central theme of our studies focuses on improving personalized healthcare through molecular imaging approaches.
In summary, we discover, validate and translate molecular imaging biomarkers that can noninvasively assess disease load at early stages and/or evaluate early response to therapeutic regimens. We employ an interplay of methods and ideas spanning through chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology along with tomography imaging to realize the ideas.
Molecular imaging methods that we mainly focus on are Photoacoustic and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as well as Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and the biomarkers that we are interested in evaluating are physiological changes in the tumor microenvironment, such as pH, hypoxia, vasculature and enzyme activity.
We use preclinical rodent models to validate and translate our imaging probes and methods within an in vivo setting, with the ultimate goal of clinical translation.
Lab news and
Research highlights
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Pooja published her first research article (and the first independent article from the group) in JACS Au (2025)
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Pooja attended and presented her work at the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, ISMRM 2025 in Honolulu, Hawaii (2025)
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Sanhita joined the Editorial board of Molecular Imaging and Biology (Springer Nature) as Senior Editor (2024)
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Sanhita received the Har Gobind Khorana Innovative Young Investigator Award fellowship, from Department of Biotechnology, DBT, India (2024)
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Ananya received a Travel Award to present at the WMIC 2024 in Montreal, Canada. Sanhita and Ananya attended WMIC 2024.
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Sanhita received the MoE-STARS grant which will focus on photoacoustic contrast agents for the targeted diagnosis of triple-negative breast cancer metastases (2023)
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Prof. Marty Pagel from MD Anderson Center visited the MIR lab. Watch the YouTube video below of his experience at IISc (2023)
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Ananya and Sanhita attended the European Molecular Imaging Meeting, EMIM at Salzburg, Austria, in 2023. Ananya delivered her first oral presentation at an international meeting!
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Arjun, Pooja, and Sanhita attended the NMRS 2023 meeting at IISER Berhampur. Pooja presented a poster on her on pH-responsive CEST MRI agents that she is developing and Sanhita delivered an invited talk.
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Sanhita delivered an invited talk at the NCBS Annual talks, NCBS Bangalore (2023)
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Sanhita attended the International Biomedical Imaging meeting at IIT Madras and delivered an invited talk (2023)
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Pooja's first review article is out in ACS Omega (2023)
Contact us
Molecular Imaging
Research Lab
LG02,
Lower Ground Floor,
TCS-X building
Indian Institute of Science,
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India - 560012
Office: Room 413, TCS-X building, IISc
Email: sanhitas[at]iisc.ac.in
Research Funding
