Casciaro Sergio
Sergio Casciaro, National Council of Research, Institute of Clinical Physiology, Bioengineering Division, Campus Universitario Ecotekne, Via per Monteroni, 73100 Lecce, Italy.
World J Radiol. 2011 Oct 28;3(10):249-55. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v3.i10.49.
Modern medicine is expanding the possibilities of receiving "personalized" diagnosis and therapies, providing minimal invasiveness, technological solutions based on non-ionizing radiation, early detection of pathologies with the main objectives of being operator independent and with low cost to society. Our research activities aim to strongly contribute to these trends by improving the capabilities of current diagnostic imaging systems, which are of key importance in possibly providing both optimal diagnosis and therapies to patients. In medical diagnostics, cellular imaging aims to develop new methods and technologies for the detection of specific metabolic processes in living organisms, in order to accurately identify and discriminate normal from pathological tissues. In fact, most diseases have a "molecular basis" that detected through these new diagnostic methodologies can provide enormous benefits to medicine. Nowadays, this possibility is mainly related to the use of Positron Emission Tomography, with an exposure to ionizing radiation for patients and operators and with extremely high medical diagnostics costs. The future possible development of non-ionizing cellular imaging based on techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance or Ultrasound, would represent an important step towards modern and personalized therapies. During the last decade, the field of nanotechnology has made important progress and a wide range of organic and inorganic nanomaterials are now available with an incredible number of further combinations with other compounds for cellular targeting. The availability of these new advanced nanosystems allows new scenarios in diagnostic methodologies which are potentially capable of providing morphological and functional information together with metabolic and cellular indications.
现代医学正在拓展获得“个性化”诊断和治疗的可能性，提供微创性、基于非电离辐射的技术解决方案，以独立于操作人员且社会成本低为主要目标实现疾病的早期检测。我们的研究活动旨在通过提高当前诊断成像系统的能力，为这些趋势做出重要贡献，而这些系统对于为患者提供最佳诊断和治疗可能至关重要。在医学诊断中，细胞成像旨在开发用于检测活生物体中特定代谢过程的新方法和技术，以便准确识别和区分正常组织与病理组织。事实上，大多数疾病都有一个“分子基础”，通过这些新的诊断方法检测到它可为医学带来巨大益处。如今，这种可能性主要与正电子发射断层扫描的使用有关，这会使患者和操作人员受到电离辐射，并且医疗诊断成本极高。基于核磁共振或超声等技术的非电离细胞成像的未来可能发展，将是迈向现代和个性化治疗的重要一步。在过去十年中，纳米技术领域取得了重要进展，现在有各种各样的有机和无机纳米材料，它们与其他化合物进行细胞靶向的组合数量惊人。这些新型先进纳米系统的可用性为诊断方法带来了新的前景，这些方法有可能同时提供形态学和功能信息以及代谢和细胞指征。
