Vanderbilt University has received a $10.3 million grant from the National Center for Research Resources to create a National Research Resource for Imaging Mass Spectrometry.

Richard Caprioli, director of Vanderbilt's Mass Spectrometry Research Center, is leading the program.

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Imaging mass spectrometry is a tool for visualizing the location of proteins in cells and tissues. It can be used to “follow” the molecular changes that cause disease, which is “vital to our understanding of how to treat a patient to stabilize, reverse and even eliminate disease processes,” said Caprioli, the Stanley Cohen Professor of Biochemistry and professor of Chemistry, Medicine and Pharmacology.

Caprioli has pioneered imaging mass spectrometry techniques and expects the new Research Resource to move this technology from the instrumental development laboratory to the biological and clinical research laboratory as a routine imaging tool.

“Imaging mass spectrometry gives the research scientist and the physician a new and unprecedented view of the molecular changes underlying disease processes,” Caprioli said.