Albert P. Chen1, Ralph E. Hurd2,
Yi-Ping Gu3, David M. Wilson4, Charles H. Cunningham3
1GE Healthcare, Toronto, ON, Canada; 2GE
Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States; 3Imaging Research,
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada; 4Radiology,
UCSF, San Francisco, CA, United States
With
the recent development of techniques to achieve highly polarized nuclear
spins states via dynamic nuclear polarization and retain the polarization in
solution, it may be feasible to utilize a suitable hyperpolarized 13C
substrate to target an enzyme reporter gene for non-invasive MR imaging of
labeled cells/tissue. In this study, a
hyperpolarized 13C MR reporter system is demonstrated in cells
transfected to overexpress a reporter gene, aminoacylase I (Acy-I), using pre-polarized [1-13C]
N-acetyl-L-methionine as the reporter probe.