Advances in vivo biological imaging

The Springer journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (ABC) has chosen the chemist Wei Sun (26) as the recipient of its Best Paper Award 2008.

Sun is the lead author of a paper in ABC on developing advanced tools for in vivo biological imaging. The award, including the 1,000 euro prize, was created by Springer to help exceptional young scientists establish their research careers.

Sun's paper demonstrates the excellent resolving power of differential interference contrast (DIC) in providing depth-resolved information in a living system in real time. DIC microscopy, a wide-field optical technique based on light interference, can provide excellent resolution and detectability for nonintrusive observation of biological processes.

Although DIC microscopes are commercially available, their unique capabilities for biological imaging have rarely been exploited. Sun and his team recorded a complete endocytosis process of a single mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN) by a living human lung cancer cell. For the first time, valuable three-dimensional information on particle diffusion
and vesicle formation and transport were extracted as a function of time. This approach can be employed to study real-time drug release events in living cells when MSNs or other nanoparticles are used as drug delivery vectors.

Wei Sun is a Ph.D. candidate in analytical chemistry at Iowa State University, USA. He received his B.S. in polymer science and engineering in 2004 from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui Province. His research projects include the application of differential interference contrast microscopy in analytical chemistry as well as scanning-angle evanescent field microscopy.

Dr. Sylvia Daunert, Editor of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, said, "The work of Wei Sun under the guidance of Professors Ed Yeung and Ning Fang represents an important contribution to the field of real-time in vivo imaging microscopy that, undoubtedly, will help shed light into molecular events. The keen competition and the quality of the
manuscripts considered for this year's award are a homage to the excellent research performed by Wei Sun."

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry is an international journal dealing with all aspects of analytical and bioanalytical sciences. The journal covers all fields of pure and applied analytical chemistry and bioanalysis, including topics at their interfaces with life and health sciences, engineering and materials sciences, environmental science, earth sciences and others. With a rating of 2.867, ABC has seen the highest growth of the Impact Factor over the last five years among related journals of analytical chemistry.