News and Events
Launch of the Elemental Health Institute (EHI) at MSU
Michigan State University advances its capabilities in elemental analysis and imaging across the life sciences.
Story by Tanya Bakija and Keith MacRenaris
Biomedical and technological expertise converged in the newly opened Elemental Health Institute (EHI) in the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building on MSU’s East Lansing campus. With a focus on identifying the roles of specific elements in life at all levels, EHI coordinates two key resources: the Quantitative Elemental Mapping for the Life Sciences (QE-Map) research center and the Quantitative Bio Element Analysis and Mapping (QBEAM) center. Together, these resources provide MSU researchers remarkable access to information about their research at the elemental level, promoting new insights into the fields of biotechnology, health, and disease.
The mission of the Elemental Health Institute (EHI) is to leverage emerging analytical technology and team science approaches to provide solutions to some of society's toughest challenges in the state of Michigan and around the world. EHI facilitates interdisciplinary collaborations across the fields of agriculture, animal science, chemistry, ecology and human medicine to ensure a healthy future for everyone.
“The collaborative teams connected by this institute are discovering new roles of essential and toxic elements in normal and pathological states. Their work also includes identification of highly durable diagnostics that enable better treatment of disorders in plants and animals, including infectious disease, metabolic disorders, cancer, infertility and neurodegenerative disease” according to MSU Research Foundation Professor and EHI Director Thomas O’Halloran. EHI focuses on the emerging area of inorganic physiology where the sophisticated technologies within EHI, QE-Map, and QBEAM can be used to evaluate the elemental signatures in cells and tissues, and how these elemental markers relate to health and disease (see associated image of an elemental map of endogenous metals in a mouse brain section). In addition, researchers in the EHI can study metal-based drugs and diagnostic agents which can be used to better treat disease. EHI accomplishes this through teams of interdisciplinary biomedical researchers who work collaboratively to understand how metals regulate fundamental biological processes using cutting edge elemental imaging and analysis approaches.
The NIH QE-Map national research resource at MSU was originally established by Professor O’Halloran at Northwestern University (NU) in 2019 with a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) with additional resources at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and NU. QE-Map organizes multiple imaging and detection methods across several universities, allowing researchers to measure the distribution of dozens of elements in biological samples. QBEAM, founded in 2021 at MSU by Professor O’Halloran and Dr. Keith MacRenaris, Research Associate Professor in Microbiology, Genetics, and Immunology (MGI), is the fee-for-service core facility housed in the ISTB which provides cutting edge trace element analysis and imaging equipment. This instrumentation allows researchers to further examine the relationship between metals and biological systems, develop diagnostics and therapeutics, and further understand the ecological and environmental consequences of metal exposure.
With some of the most advanced elemental analysis and mapping facilities in the nation, EHI welcomes researchers to collaborate and learn how to use these available resources to push new ground in elemental imaging and analysis research. Through consistent use of these resources, advanced methods for routine quantitative element mapping will drive many types of biological research and spur innovation.