In a Joint Venture With a Japanese Company, UCI Scientists Are Sounding Out the Secrets of Living Cells With an Acoustic Microscope Designed for Industrial Use : Visions of Medical Milestones

Through a joint venture with a Japanese company, UC Irvine researchers areworking to develop major medical applications for an acoustic microscope that was designed for industrial use.

If the project is successful, it could ultimately reduce the need for biopsies and exploratory surgery. It would also provide a significant new market for the microscope’s manufacturer, Olympus Optical Ltd. of Tokyo, and advance UCI’s efforts to enter into profitable ventures with the private sector.

Unlike traditional optical microscopes, which use light to convey images, the acoustic microscope bounces high-frequency sound waves off a cell to produce information that a computer then translates into images on a screen.

In what UCI officials call a “sweetheart arrangement,” Olympus sold the 3-foot-by-8-foot microscope to UCI at about half its $375,000 market price and granted the university ownership of patents and a share of royalties on any new applications that its researchers may discover. Olympus would have the exclusive right to market any modifications to the microscope and would also receive some of the royalties.

William Parker, vice chancellor of research at UCI, said the university in the past 5 years has been entering into an increasing number of joint ventures with businesses as a way to obtain support from the private sector for its research programs.

The computer science department, for instance, frequently tests and recommends improvements in the new products of computer software manufacturers. And the biological science department often tests newly developed laboratory instruments before they are introduced to the commercial market.

The ventures offer the university two benefits: immediate access to the latest technology at bargain rates and the promise of royalties that will finance future research.

“Right now what we are getting is state-of-the-art technology in our science programs,” Parker said.

Having such high-tech instruments available at the university is important in attracting first-rate faculty and graduate students, according to L. Wade Rose, assistant dean of community affairs and development at the UCI College of Medicine.

In the case of the acoustic microscope, Rose said, researchers have a tool that could provide a major breakthrough in the field of medical diagnostics.

“The ultimate promise for the device is to enable physicians to study organs remotely without having to do biopsies,” Rose said.

Sidney Braginsky, senior vice president of the precision instrument division of Olympus Corp., a New York-based subsidiary of the Japanese parent company, said UCI is the first to explore the use of the acoustic microscope for practical medical applications. Currently, he said, there are about 50 acoustic microscopes, developed by various firms, in the United States. All but the microscope at UCI are being used exclusively for industrial purposes.

Joie Jones, a professor of radiological science at UCI who is conducting research with the microscope, contends that the Olympus microscope has the potential to advance the diagnosis and research of disease as well as the development of new drugs because it allows scientists to study cells while they are still alive.

Optical microscopes, he said, cannot portray the depth and structure of human tissue unless the tissue is first treated with dye, which also kills it.

The Olympus microscope strikes human tissue with very short sound waves at up to a billion cycles a second. Then the waves bounce back to the instrument at various intensities that are caused by the structure of the tissue. With the help of a transducer, the echoes are converted to electrical signals that a computer translates into pictures of live tissue. The images are created in seconds, a line at a time, on a screen next to the microscope.

Pathologists using optical microscopes need a few hours to a few days to prepare biopsy tissue to determine whether it is malignant, Jones said. By contrast, he said, the acoustic microscope could make an instantaneous diagnosis on extracted tissue while the patient is still on the operating table.

Better yet, he said, the microscope might eliminate the need for risky and expensive exploratory surgery. An ultrasound device could be placed at the end of a catheter, he said, and threaded through the arteries of the body to analyze the cause of obstructions or heart problems.

Also, Jones sees a potential use of acoustic microscopes by the pharmaceutical industry, which could, for instance, monitor the effects of new drugs on diseased tissues or study the growth of cancers. The study of live tissue, he said, could eliminate the need for clinical tests of drugs on animals.

Jones, who specializes in ultrasound medical technology, said he learned about the Olympus acoustic microscope 3 years ago when he attended a semiconductor industry convention in Anaheim.

Intrigued by the medical applications of the microscope, which was designed as a quality-control instrument in the manufacture of circuit boards, he launched a 3-year campaign to persuade Olympus to put the instrument through new paces at the UCI College of Medicine.

“He convinced us it might be to his advantage and to the advantage of us and the university and the world of science,” Olympus’ Braginsky said.

He said Olympus is relying on UCI scientists to interpret the meaning of the images that are produced by the acoustic microscope and create a compendium of information that will serve as a road map for other scientists and physicians to use in the future.

Jones said that the university will soon publish scientific papers on using the acoustic microscope in dermatology. Many more such papers will need to be published, he acknowledged, before the medical community will be convinced of the efficacy of the new instrument and taught how to use it--a process that he figures will take 5 to 10 more years.

In the meantime, the university is making the acoustic microscope available to the general business community.

For $200 an hour, companies can arrange for the microscope’s operators to search for structural flaws in products ranging from computer chips to interocular lenses. Jones said the university will use the money it earns from the extracurricular enterprise to pay for the microscope and to finance its research. In the first 2 months of the rental program, 10 companies have participated and put about $15,000 in the university’s coffers.