Dr. Chien Ho is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) as well as the director of the Pittsburgh NMR Center for Biomedical Research which is jointly sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh and CMU. The Pittsburgh NMR Center is funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the National Institutes of Health. It is dedicated to advancing state-of-the-art in-vivo MRI and MRS processes and tools to better understand tissue and organ function and to make the tools available to the greater biomedical research community.
Dr. Ho earned a PhD from Yale University in 1961 and completed his postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A former recipient of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute MERIT Award, Dr. Ho is a member of Academia Sinica and actively involved in research efforts rooted in understanding the relationship between structure and function in biological systems. This is made possible by correlating information obtained from biochemical, biophysical, and molecular biological techniques.
Dr. Ho has further contributed to the research by authoring articles that appear in many publications. At the present time, he is involved in two major research projects within his areas of interest.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The first research area centers on a study of normal and mutant human hemoglobins in order to understand the molecular mechanism of transport of oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. By constructing an expression plasmid to produce unmodified human adult hemoglobin in Escherichia coli, it is possible to design and express any mutant hemoglobins needed for research on the structure-function relationship in hemoglobin. Some of the designed recombinant hemoglobins are potential candidates for hemoglobin-based oxygen carriers and/or hemoglobin therapeutics. The hemoglobin research is an excellent illustration of the power of combining information obtained from X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy, computer modeling, molecular genetics, and functional studies to correlate the structure-dynamics-function relationship of an allosteric protein under physiological conditions at atomic resolution.
The second research area centers on the application of NMR to living systems, both by imaging (MRI) and by spectroscopic (MRS) methods. Currently, techniques are being developed to monitor the migration of immune cells in vivo by magnetic resonance using dextran-coated superparamagnetic iron oxide particles as contrast agents. This work may offer a new non-invasive approach to detecting early signs of organ rejection after transplantation. Also, this approach can readily be adapted to track cell movement of other cell types, provided that an MRI contrast agent can be non-invasively incorporated into the cells and that there is sufficient sensitivity for MRI detection.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Dr. Chien Ho
Phone: (412) 268-3395
Email: chienho@andrew.cmu.edu