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JEFFREY PRICE, MD., PH.D.
Associate Professor
Signal Transduction
858.646.3162 (phone)
858.795.5298 (fax)
jprice@sanfordburnham.org
RESEARCH FOCUS, BIOGRAPHY, STAFF, PUBLICATIONS
Research Focus
The central theme is the development of fully automated quantitative microscopy, or scanning cytometry, for biomedical applications. The instrumentation research areas include high performance autofocus, real-time image segmentation and image fluorometry. These are key components for a scanning cytometer capable of accurate, exhaustive analyses of the 100,000 – 10,000,000 cells on a single microscope slide at optical resolution (usually ≤ 0.5 x 0.5 mm2 pixels). Quantifying the measurement accuracy and/or precision of each step in the scanning cytometry process (e.g., autofocus followed by image segmentation, fluorometry and cell classification) are key components of the research. Current and proposed biomedical research areas include cervical (Pap smear) cancer screening, rare event detection (e.g., locating fetal cells in maternal circulation for genotyping), and chemotherapy testing using time-lapse scanning cytometry of living cells cultured on the microscope stage.
Biography
Jeffrey H. Price received his M.D. degree from Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, in 1985, and his Ph.D. degree in bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego, in 1990, where he also received his postdoctoral training. In 1993, he was appointed Assistant Project Scientist and, in 1996, Associate Research Scientist. From 1994 to 2004 he directed the NSF-Whitaker Quantitative Imaging and Confocal Microscopy Resource in Bioengineering at UCSD. In 1999 he founded Q3DM, Inc., which marketed his research group’s high throughput microscopy inventions for cell-image-based screening, and which was purchased by Beckman Coulter, Inc. in 2003. In 2004 he Co-Founded Vala Sciences Inc, which develops and markets software and kits for cell-image based assays. He was recruited to the position of Associate Professor at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in 2004, where he is a member of the Signal Transduction and Stem Cells and Regeneration Research Programs. With its collaborators, his laboratory is focused on automated analytical microscopy research for tissue proteomics, tracking of cell migration and differentiation, and rare cell diagnostics.
Selected Publications
MM Morelock, EA Hunter, TJ Moran, S Heynen, C Laris, M Thieleking, M Akong, I Mikic, S Callaway, A Goodacre, RP DeLeon, DA Zacharias, JH Price, “Statistics of Assay Validation in High Throughput Cell Imaging of Nuclear Factor B Nuclear Translocation,” Assay and Drug Development Technologies, 3(5): 483-500, 2005.
JH Price, A Goodacre, KM Hahn, L Hodgson, EA Hunter, S Krajewski, RF Murphy, A Rabinovich, JC Reed, S Heynen, “Advances in Molecular Labeling, High Throughput Imaging and Machine Intelligence Portend Powerful Functional Cellular Biochemistry Tools”. J. Cell. Biochem. Supplement 39:194-210, 2002.
S Bajaj, JB Welsh, RC Leif, JH Price, “Ultra-Rare-Event Detection Performance of a Custom Scanning Cytometer on a Model Preparation of Fetal nRBCs,” Cytometry, 39:285-294, 2000.
M Oliva, ME Bravo-Zanoguera, JH Price, “Filtering out contrast reversals for microscopy autofocus,” Applied Optics, Optical Tech. & Biomed. Optics, 38(4):638-646, 1999.
M Bravo-Zanoguera, B von Massenbach, AL Kellner and JH Price, “High Performance Autofocus Circuit for Biological Microscopy,” Review of Scientific Instruments, 69(11):3966-3977, 1998.
JH Price, EA Hunter, and DA Gough, "Accuracy of Least Squares Designed Spatial FIR Filters for Segmentation of Images of Fluorescence Stained Cell Nuclei," Cytometry, 25(4): 303 - 316, 1996.
JH Price, DA Gough, "Comparison of Digital Autofocus Functions for Phase-Contrast and Fluorescence Scanning Microscopy," Cytometry, 16(4): 283 - 297, 1994.