29 June 2026
Dr. James Eills from Forschungszentrum Jülich has received the Varian Young Investigator Award. The international prize honours early-career researchers who are making significant contributions to advancing nuclear magnetic resonance - NMR for short - through new instrumentation or methods. Eills is being recognised for techniques that greatly enhance MRI signals, opening up new possibilities for making diseases such as cancer more visible.
Many diseases alter the metabolism of cells. In cancer, for example, certain metabolic processes often differ from those in healthy tissue. Detecting such changes as early and accurately as possible is an important goal in medical imaging. This is where Eills' research comes in.
He develops methods known as hyperpolarisation, which can increase NMR and MRI signals by a factor of 10,000 or more. This makes structures and processes that would otherwise be barely measurable clearly visible - rather like a whisper suddenly being amplified through a microphone.
Tracking metabolism in real time
One of James Eills' main research interests is parahydrogen-induced polarisation, or PHIP. This method uses a special form of hydrogen gas known as parahydrogen. Its quantum-mechanical properties can be harnessed to greatly amplify the signals from certain molecules. The approach is considered comparatively cost-effective and well suited to broader applications.
This is particularly promising for small metabolic molecules known as metabolites. When these molecules are hyperpolarised - in other words, when their MRI signal is temporarily amplified - they can be tracked in the body using MRI. This makes it possible to observe metabolic processes as they happen. Such information is highly relevant for the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, where abnormal metabolic activity is often a characteristic feature.
One example is the metabolic building block fumarate, a molecule involved in cellular energy metabolism. James Eills has developed methods to hyperpolarise fumarate in aqueous solution and then purify it - that is, separate it from unwanted impurities - so that it can be prepared for use in MRI. Fumarate prepared in this way is already being used as an MRI contrast agent in clinical studies. This means that the research extends beyond fundamental science and offers tangible prospects for medical applications.
NMR without huge magnets
Alongside signal enhancement, Eills is working on a further simplification: zero- to ultralow-field NMR, or ZULF NMR. Conventional NMR and MRI measurements are usually carried out using large, permanently installed instruments. One reason for this is the strong magnetic fields required by standard systems.
Eills is therefore also developing methods that do not rely on large superconducting magnets. ZULF NMR uses very weak magnetic fields and could, in the long term, enable more compact measurement devices. Chemical analyses would then no longer be confined to specialised laboratories with large-scale infrastructure, but could become simpler and more widely available - for example, in research laboratories, hospitals, or settings where no large NMR instrument is currently available.
At Forschungszentrum Jülich, Eills heads the Hyperpolarization Methods Lab at the Institute of Biological Information Processing - Structural Biochemistry (IBI-7). The lab is supported by a Helmholtz Young Investigator Grant worth €1.5 million. Before joining Jülich, he was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow in Barcelona and completed his PhD at the University of Southampton.
The award highlights how new NMR methods can help make medical imaging more sensitive - and reveal metabolic processes that are particularly relevant for detecting diseases such as cancer.
