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Christopher H. Contag (born September 8, 1959) is an American scientist. He is presently professor emeritus at Stanford University and the James and Kathleen Cornelius Endowed Chair in the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Microbiology, Genetics, and Immunology  at Michigan State University (MSU), and a professor by courtesy in the Center for Bioethics and Social Justice. He is the founding director of the Institute for Quantitative Health Science and Engineering (IQ) and was the inaugural chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Prior to establishing these two academic units at MSU, he was a professor of Pediatrics and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine and served in the roles of Associate Chief of the Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, director of Stanford’s Center for Innovation in In Vivo Imaging (SCI3), and co-director of both the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS) and the Child Health Research Institute (CHRI). He has authored 325 publications with several of these being seminal papers in the field of molecular imaging. His publications include the first reports on using bioluminescent enzymes as reporters in living mammals to reveal the extent and location of infection ,1 patterns of gene expression, cancer progression and response to therapy , immune cell trafficking and single stem cell engraftment and expansion. His patent on using light to image biological changes in living mammals (US Pat. No. 6,939,533) was used by him and his cofounders to establish the company Xenogen Corp. (now part of Revvity, previously PerkinElmer). This patent, and its inventors, were named to Stanford Inventors’ Hall of Fame in 2013. This technology, in vivo bioluminescence imaging, is used by most major drug companies and many research organizations around the world to image biology and the effects of drugs on biology in living animal models of disease.

Dr. Contag is a pioneer in the field of molecular imaging and continues to develop imaging approaches aimed at revealing molecular processes in living subjects, including humans, and advancing therapeutic strategies through imaging. This has included showing that the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes persists in the gall bladder and is excreted in response to fat intake as a potential source of food contamination. His use of in vivo bioluminescence imaging (BLI) also demonstrated that natural killer T cells can deliver engineered viruses to tumors, with a synergistic effect, as a potent anticancer therapy, and that cancer cells that persist after molecularly targeted therapies have stem cell features. His patent on using immune cells to deliver engineered viruses to tumors as a synergistic therapeutic strategy (US Pat. No. 9,101,658) was used by him and his cofounders to create BioEclipse Therapeutics (previously ConcentRx Corp.), a cancer therapy company in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His laboratory currently develops macroscopic and microscopic optical imaging tools and uses imaging to assess tissue responses to stress, reveal immune cell migration patterns, understand stem cell biology and advance biological therapies. One of the biotherapies he is currently developing, using imaging to guide the development, is the use of engineered endosymbionts to control cell fates and functions in response to signals from outside the body. This builds on his development of molecular imaging tools with an aim toward noninvasive control of cells and tissue regeneration in the body with the ability to image these changes over time.

Dr. Contag was one of the founding members of the Society for Molecular Imaging (SMI, now part of the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS) and had been elected as president of each of these societies; SMI in 2002 and WMIS in 2016.

Career and Research
Dr. Contag joined the faculty in Pediatrics at Stanford in 1995 with a joint appointment in Microbiology and Immunology and courtesy appointments in Radiology and Bioengineering. During his time at Stanford University he developed tools for imaging biological processes in living animals and humans and used these tools for the study of cancer, infection and stem cell biology. At Stanford he was also a member of BioX faculty for interdisciplinary sciences, and of the Immunology Faculty. He was recruited to MSU in 2016 to lead the new IQ institute and to establish a new department of Biomedical Engineering. While at Stanford University began developing engineered endosymbionts for imaging, and then continued to develop these as a means to control cell fates and functions while at MSU. Dr. Contag began studying extracellular vesicles as a mechanism of cellular communication while at Stanford, and continues this work at MSU. In collaboration with Bayer Pharmaceuticals and now with GLAdiator BioSciences, Dr. Contag and his team characterized binding and internalization of a Gla-domain protein to stem cells via phosphatidyl serine (PS) exposure on the cell surface and is developing these proteins as novel therapeutic delivery tools for cancer and stem cells. The PS-binding motif in these proteins is comprised of a carboxyglutamic acid (Gla) residue domain that both recognizes and binds cell surface-exposed PS, and then, unlike other PS-binding molecules, this protein is internalized into cells. At present, Dr. Contag, is Professor emeritus in the Departments of Pediatrics, Radiology and Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University and a professor of Biomedical Engineering and Microbiology, Genetics, and Immunology at MSU. ,He is a founding member and past president of the Society for Molecular Imaging (SMI), and recipient of the Achievement Award from the SMI and the Britton Chance Award from the SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, for his fundamental contributions to optics. Dr. Contag is also a fellow and past president of the World Molecular Imaging Society, which now includes SMI.

Personal
Contag was born in New Ulm, Minnesota to Ann Louise and Carlos Heinz Contag and attended New Ulm Public High School (Independent School District 88, ISD 88); he was named to the ISD 88 Hall of Fame (https://isd88foundation.org/hall-of-fame/) in 2016. He has four siblings, David (born 1957), Kimberly (born 1958), Deborah (born 1961) and Theodore (born 1970). Dr. Contag was married to Dr. Pamela Reilly Contag (CEO of BioEclipse) from 1987 to 2016 and they have three children Caitlin Ann Contag, a Fellow in Internal Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, Ashlyn Grace (Snyder) Contag and Greyson Christopher Reilly.

Training and Education
Dr. Contag received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Minnesota, St. Paul in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis in 1988 where he did his dissertation research under the direction of Professors Ashley Haase (https://med.umn.edu/bio/ashley-haase) and Peter Plagemann on the topic of viral infections of the central nervous system. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University from 1990-1994 in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology with Dr. James Mullins (now at the University of Washington, https://mullinslab.microbiol.washington.edu/) where he studied mother-to-infant transmission of HIV, and developed in vivo bioluminescence imaging, initially, as a way to track infections, and then as a means to imaging biology in living animal models of human health and disease.

Awards and Honors
Britton Chance Lecture and Opening Plenary, World Molecular Imaging Congress (WMIC)

Distinguished Investigator, Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging

John and Bette Klacsmann Visiting Professor, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida

James and Kathleen Cornelius Chair, Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, Michigan State University

Britton Chance Award for outstanding lifetime contributions to the field of biomedical optics through the development of innovative, high impact technologies, International Society of Optics and Photonics (SPIE)

John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan State Univ. Hannah Visiting Professor, Michigan State University

Helen C. Levitt Visiting Professorship, Department of Molecular Medicine, Mayo Clinic

Distinguished Lecturer, UC Irvine Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP)

Keynote Address, Seeing is Believing and Beyond, National Cancer Center Korea

Stanford Inventors’ Hall of Fame

James C. Overall Lecturer in Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University Keynote Address, Imaging in Drug Development

Fellow of the World Molecular Imaging Society

Invited Lecture, European Society of Clinical Infectious Disease, Milan, Italy

Opening Plenary Lecture, European Society for Molecular Imaging, Warsaw Poland.

Invited Lecture, Regenerative Medicine Conference, Hilton Head, South Carolina

Invited Lecture, British Society of Immunology, Cambridge University “Visions of Immunology”

Distinguished Lecture, UC Davis: In Vivo Applications of Bioluminescence

Invited Lecture, Nobel Symposium: Watching life through Molecular Imaging

Invited Lecturer, Wallenberg Neuroscience Center at Lund University

Keynote Address, Gordon Research Conference "Cancer Models and Mechanisms",

Achievement Award, Society for Molecular Imaging

Article entitled "Advances in in vivo bioluminescence imaging of gene expression" as published in the journal "Annual Rev. Biomed. Eng.” is one of the most cited papers in the field of engineering--ISI

American Federation for Clinical Research (AFCR). Upjohn Infectious Disease Prize

Scholar of the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR) National Research Service Award, Postdoctoral, NIAID training grant: Molecular Basis of Host Parasite Interactions. Stanford University School of Medicine

National Research Service Award; NCI Cancer Biology Training Grant, University of Minnesota School of Medicine

Viral Research Grant, ViroMed and Minnesota Chapter of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases

Bacaner Research Award, Minnesota Medical Foundation and Basic Science Departments, University of Minnesota.

National Research Service Award, NCI cancer biology training grant. University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

Patents and Entrepreneurship
Dr. Contag was one of the co-founders of the companies Xenogen Corp. (now part of Revvity), PixelGear, EXOForce, and BioEclipse Therapeutics (previously ConcentRx Corp). He has fifteen patents in the areas of imaging, drug delivery, diagnostics, immunotherapy, in vivo control of protein function, optical imaging, biopolymers, magnetic control of biology and orthopedic implants.

Publications
Chris Contag as over 320 publications. His research has been published in a number of journals including Nature, Science, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and PloS.