Dr. Cristina Cudalbu, Head of the CIBM Pre-Clinical Imaging EPFL Metabolic Imaging Section hosted the CIBM Visitors talk on September 24, 2025 by Dr. Jamie Near, University of Toronto & Dr. Diana Rotaru, Medical University of Vienna.
High-resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS) NMR spectroscopy in cerebral organoids
Cerebral organoids are three dimensional “mini-brains” cultured in the lab from human pluripotent stem cells. They represent an emerging technology for studying human brain development and physiology. In this talk, I will describe my lab’s recent developed a platform for high-resolution NMR spectroscopy for metabolic assessment in intact cerebral organoids. Our approach uses high-resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS), which provides exceptional spectral quality and enables detection of more than 17 individual metabolites in intact organoids. This platform is among the first of its kind in the world, and will enable us to study brain metabolic alterations associated with specific genes of interest.
Jamie Near
Physical Sciences, Sunnybrook Research Institute & Department of Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto
Dr. Near is a Senior Scientist at the Sunnybrook Research Institute in Toronto, Canada, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. Dr. Near’s research involves 1) the development and implementation of advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) techniques for measurement of metabolite concentrations in the brain; and 2) the application of these methods to study brain chemistry and metabolism in neuroscience and mental health research.
1H-MRS in a mouse model of pancreatic ductal andenocarcinoma: a preliminary study
Technical limitations and lack of standardization led to an unmet need to characterize metabolic changes in the pancreas using in vivo 1H-MRS. The aim of this study is to establish a processing, analysis, and quantification pipeline for pancreas MRS data that aligns with current consensus guidelines and state-of-the-art methodology. A mouse model of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma was used to test and validate this framework. The results of the proposed pipeline provide a preliminary validation of its quantitative potential.
Diana Rotaru
Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna
Diana Rotaru is a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Christoph Juchem at the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Her research primarily focuses on Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) of the human and animal brain, with a recent extension to applications in the pancreas.
Dr. Rotaru earned a BSc in Medical Engineering from the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, followed by an MSc in Neuroimaging and a PhD in Neuroimaging Physics from King’s College London, UK. During her postgraduate training, she specialized in the acquisition, processing, and analysis of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutathione (GSH) in the human brain. In parallel, she conducted studies on chemical shift displacement error and evaluated correction strategies. Her work also included investigations of GABA detection in rodents using both conventional and spectral-editing MRS sequences.
Following her PhD, Dr. Rotaru joined the Adaptive Brain Lab, led by Prof. Zoe Kourtzi at the University of Cambridge, UK, where she focused on hippocampal MRS. Prior to relocating to Vienna, she was a member of the MR SCIENCE Lab, led by Christoph Juchem at Columbia University in New York, USA, where she began the investigation of the pancreas using MRS.