Best Paper Award at the SPIE Photonics West to Alba Alfonso Garcia
Alba won the Best Paper Award with the paper "Assessing in vivo label-free fluorescence lifetime Imaging sensitivity to low-grade colon inflammation”.
This study assesses the sensitivity of label-free fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIm) for detecting low-grade gastrointestinal inflammation in mice. A FLIm probe was developed for in vivo colon imaging, enabling complete colon scanning. Using the probe, low-grade inflammation induced by streptomycin was imaged, showing decreased fluorescence lifetime at wavelengths related to metabolic activity, indicating a shift to glycolytic metabolism in inflamed tissue. The potential of validating FLIm maps with spatial transcriptomics was explored. These methodologies provide a basis for further experimentation to establish FLIm as a tool to quantify colon epithelial metabolism over time and its relevance to monitor colorectal inflammatory disease.