Project Summary Earning a doctorate and practicing veterinary medicine equipped Dr. Akers with knowledge in anatomy, physiology and diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases. He sought to further advance my research training by completing a biomedical engineering education emphasizing optical contrast agents and biomedical imaging. The complex interplay of signaling events in cancer biology is multidimensional, requiring a broad and flexible comprehension in approaching molecular imaging of cancer. Dr. Akers' career goal is to combine his education and experience as veterinarian and biological imaging scientist to combat cancer and other diseases through developing novel preclinical and translational molecular imaging approaches and improving our ability to diagnose, stage and treat disease processes. His work at Washington University is achieving this goal through development of new molecular imaging agents and detection strategies to illuminate biochemical and cellular events in vivo using non-invasive or minimally invasive detection technologies. His experience with many animal models of cancer and expertise in optical and multimodal molecular imaging has opened opportunities for innovative and collaborative biomedical research across disparate fields including tumor immunology, gene therapy and theranostic nanotechnology. Dr. Akers has therefore driven himself, through multiple collaborative studies, becoming an expert in cancer biology, animal and human. As the Assistant Director of Optical Imaging Shared Resource (OISR) and faculty member in the Optical Radiology Laboratory (ORL), he provides specialized expertise to many research programs at Washington University School of Medicine. By enabling him to continue research without disruption from inevitable changes grant funding, the NIH Specialist Award will provide continuity and autonomy to develop new imaging strategies to better accomplish the goals of funded projects and acquire preliminary data to support new research directions in cancer imaging and therapy, accelerating the Washington University School of Medicine cancer research enterprise.