Marcela Cortes-Ramirez1, Giuseppe Pizzorno1,2, Gopalkrishna Veni3, H Michael Gach2,3
1Drug Development, Nevada Cancer Institute, Las Vegas, NV, USA; 2University of Nevada School of Medicine, NV; 3Research Imaging Facility, Nevada Cancer Institute, Las Vegas, NV, USA
Fluorine (19F) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) can monitor the metabolism of fluorinated drugs like capecitabine in vivo. Fluorinated inhalation anesthetic agents like isoflurane are very useful since they can be safely administered for long experimental times typical of MRS animal studies. There is concern that fluorinated anesthesia may interfere with 19F MRS of capecitabine metabolism. We compared the effects of isoflurane and ketamine on capecitabine liver metabolism in C57BL/6J mice using 19F MRS. The isoflurane spectra did not interfere with the capecitabine and its metabolite spectra. However, ketamine appears to increase the rate of capecitabine liver metabolism compared to isoflurane.