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SUMMARY:Imaging cancer metabolism - Out of the lab and into the clinic - P
 rofessor Kevin Brindle FMedSci FRS\, Professor of Biomedical Magnetic Reso
 nance\, Department of Biochemistry and Cancer Research UK\, Cambridge Inst
 itute\, Li Ka Shing Centre
DTSTART:20220228T183000Z
DTEND:20220228T193000Z
UID:TALK168494@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Beverley Larner
DESCRIPTION:Imaging the metabolism of tumours is likely to play an increas
 ingly important role in predicting and detecting tumour responses to treat
 ment and thus in guiding treatment in individual patients. Magnetic resona
 nce spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging has long been used to study non
 -invasively the metabolism of tissues in the human body.  The problem is t
 hat it is a very insensitive technique which means that the resolution of 
 the images is poor and examination times can be very long.  We have been u
 sing a technique\, called dynamic nuclear hyperpolarization (DNP)\, which 
 can increase sensitivity in the MRI experiment by >10\,000x.  In this tech
 nique we “hyperpolarize” 13C-labelled substrates\, such as glucose\, a
 nd then inject them intravenously.  13C is a non-radioactive isotope of ca
 rbon that can be detected in the MRI experiment. The massive increase in s
 ensitivity afforded by hyperpolarization of the 13C nucleus means that we 
 can image the location of the labelled substrate in the body and its metab
 olic conversion into downstream metabolites. A former colleague once said 
 that it allowed us to watch tumours “eat and breath” and most importan
 tly we can also watch them die when a therapy is effective.  In this lectu
 re I will describe the work that we have done using this technique over th
 e last 15 years\, which has taken it from the lab and into the clinic.  I 
 will finish by describing a new MRI technique for imaging tumour metabolis
 m\, which has also recently gone into the clinic and that uses deuterium (
 2H)-labelled substrates (2H is a non-radioactive isotope of hydrogen that 
 can also be detected in the MRI experiment).  2H is even less sensitive to
  MRI detection than 13C and is not suitable for hyperpolarization.  In thi
 s case we exploit an NMR property of the 2H nucleus which allows us to acq
 uire signal very rapidly without signal saturation\, which compensates for
  the low sensitivity of detection.  I will show how we think that this can
  provide complementary information to that provided by imaging with hyperp
 olarized 13C-labelled substrates.
LOCATION:Babbage Lecture Theatre\, New Museums Site\, Downing Street\, Cam
 bridge
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