Fall 2018: Seminar Series

September 18, 2018

Jason Nasse, PhD

Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Mentor: Carmela Abraham, PhD)

“Identifying Klotho Transcription Factors and Protein Interactions”

September 25, 2018

Mark Fishman, MD

Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University

“Genetics of Social Behavior in Zebrafish”

October 2, 2018

Guillermo Tearney MD, PhD

Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School

“Future of Intravascular OCT”

Intravascular OCT (IVOCT) is a clinically-available, catheter-based imaging modality that obtains high (10 µm) resolution images of the coronary wall. Currently, IVOCT is being pursued as a method for improving PCI outcomes and may have some utility for detecting microstructural features of vulnerable plaque. While IVOCT is very powerful, it is incapable of detecting more than superficial architectural morphology and thus does cannot completely characterize intracoronary lesions. In our laboratory, we have been developing newer IVOCT technologies that address this gap. Multimodality technologies such as OCT-near infrared fluorescence (OCT-NIRF) and OCT-near infrared spectroscopy (OCT-NIRS) offer the potential to image complementary structural and molecular/chemical information. A more advanced 1-µm-resolution form of OCT (µOCT) makes it possible to see cells and sub cellular structures in the vessel wall using a coronary catheter. This next generation of OCT technology will improve our capacity to better understand human coronary atherosclerosis and precisely characterize coronary phenotypes in individual patients.