An Image of Success

For the first time in its 60-year history, Germany's internationally acclaimed Max Planck Society is underway with the establishment of a research institute in the United States, called the Max Planck Florida Institute. Due to officially open in 2011, the planned 100,000-square-foot research facility with laboratories will be a neighbor to Scripps Florida on six acres at Florida Atlantic University's MacArthur Campus in Jupiter. The new institute commenced operations in a temporary facility in Jupiter in October of 2009.

The primary focus of the Max Planck Florida Institute is to further global knowledge of bioimaging, by using the most advanced techniques to "in vivo" visualize molecular processes. Bioimaging provides a critical opportunity to translate discoveries of basic research into clinical and patient-oriented applications, ultimately improving medical diagnostics and the quality of care.

In its first scientific department, beginning summer 2009, the Max Planck Florida Institute plans to initiate a research program dedicated to the elucidation of the detailed and precise structural arrangement of nerves within the mouse cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex is a structure within the brain that plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. MPFI researchers will create a three-dimensional atlas of nerve cell bodies, dendrites and axons by first labeling the different cell types with specific fluorescent markers and then imaging and quantifying the neuron distributions to create a three-dimensional map of the normal brain. This work will lay the foundation for future studies on brain degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's. This work will not only help further our basic understanding of the degenerative disease process, but could also serve as a platform to measure the beneficial changes caused by novel therapeutic approaches such as new drugs and stem cell therapy.