The Pittsburgh NMR Center for Biomedical Research is a joint endeavor of Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh and is administered through the MPC Corporation. "We are very pleased to receive this grant, which will help us continue to make major contributions to the rapidly growing field of NMR in biology and medicine," said Chien Ho, director of the center and professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. Funds will allow investigators to pursue research in five technological research and development projects in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), including:

• Non-Invasive Detection of Allograft Rejection Using MRI. Organ transplantation is the preferred treatment for patients with end-stage organ failure; however, transplanted organs often fail when a patient's immune system rejects the new implant. Early diagnosis and treatment of organ rejection is critical. Center investigators are developing novel, non-invasive MRI-based methods to monitor organ function and the accumulation of immune cells at a transplanted organ. One of the center's primary goals is to establish a non-invasive, reliable and sensitive technique that not only detects acute rejection, but also correctly identifies rejection grades. With further development, such technology should help physicians detect organ rejection at early stages and also improve a patient's quality of life by reducing the number of invasive, post-transplantation tissue biopsies.
• In-Vivo Magnetic Resonance Microscopy. Tracking the initiation and progression of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) is extremely difficult using current imaging technologies. NMR Center scientists are maki
  '"/>