image: UVA biomedical engineering professor Kimberly Kelly
Credit: Submitted photo
Kimberly Kelly, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science and the UVA School of Medicine, has been named editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Imaging and Biology.
Molecular imaging, the focus of the journal, allows researchers and medical professionals to measure biological processes at the cellular and molecular levels.
The technique uses numerous methods to generate signals from biological processes that are then converted to images. The images enable researchers to non-invasively analyze what’s happening within the body.
Kelly’s appointment dovetails with her career in developing and commercializing more effective, less toxic cancer drugs. Molecular imaging is one of the key research tools she uses in her lab, which spans multiple disciplines. As a bioinformatics expert, she uses artificial intelligence and other advanced computer analysis to understand large biological datasets.
Kelly’s “expertise, experience and vision for the journal were key factors in the [search committee’s] decision” to select her, said Lisa Baird, chief executive officer of the World Molecular Imaging Society, which publishes Molecular Imaging and Biology.
According to the society’s website, “The better we understand biological processes of living systems, with all of the contextual influences intact, the more effective our therapies will be in the clinic. Molecular imaging lies at the heart of precision medicine.”
Kelly’s appointment commenced at the World Molecular Imaging Society’s conference last week.
Kelly’s Cancer Research Spinout
Several years ago, Kelly upended traditional drug-discovery approaches with an insight that resulted in a proprietary platform. Rather than starting with a disease and looking for a drug that might work, she starts with a prospective drug and uses specialized algorithms to screen cells for disease markers the drug could target.
The breakthrough led to her founding ZielBio, a University of Virginia “spinout” biotech firm with one such drug, ZB131, currently in clinical trials.
“Normally, with this kind of screening, you can only do about 100 samples at one time," she told UVA Today in 2019. "With this technology, we can look at 2 million, giving us a statistically valid quantitative sampling.”
Kelly joined UVA’s faculty in 2008 following a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, where, among other things, she developed a method to image and monitor an important human protein in mouse models of atherosclerosis. She left Massachusetts General as an assistant professor of radiology.
She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American Pancreatic Association, the American Association for Cancer Research, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She was named a William Guy Forbeck Scholar in 2005 and awarded an AACR-Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Career Development award in 2007.
Today her lab focuses on the currently intractable problem of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and other cancers. Read more on her faculty profile.