This $501,049 project grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Chemistry under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports the development of new multimodal mass spectrometry imaging methods to quantify the distribution and biochemical effects of polymeric nanomaterials in biological tissues. Professors Richard Vachet and Vincent Rotello at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are leading this 3-year research effort, which aims to create molecular tagging strategies that can be combined with laser ablation ICP-MS and MALDI-MS to provide high-resolution, spatially-resolved data on nanomaterial-enabled therapeutics. The new imaging approaches are expected to facilitate optimization of nanomaterial-based drug delivery systems, particularly for emerging RNA therapies, by enabling simultaneous tracking of multiple nanomaterial designs in vivo. In addition, the project will develop computational tools to integrate the mass spectrometry data with complementary fluorescence imaging techniques, providing unprecedented insight into the fate and biological effects of these nanomaterial delivery systems.
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