Abstract #1261

Glunde K, Raman V, Bhujwalla Z

Hypoxic regions are frequently found in the tumor microenvironment. Hypoxic conditions cause cells to stabilize hypoxia inducible factor (HIF-1&[alpha]), a transcriptional activator binding to hypoxia response elements (HRE) in hypoxia-inducible genes. Using combined MRS and optical imaging, we previously demonstrated a strong spatial association between regions of hypoxia and elevated total choline (tCho) levels in human prostate cancer xenografts stably expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) under the control of an HRE. Here we have extended our study to demonstrate that hypoxia drives up phosphocholine (PC) and tCho levels in wild-type PC-3 cells, mediated by an increased expression of choline kinase.