Eduard Y. Chekmenev1,2, Siu-Kei Chow1, Jan B. Hoevener1, Valerie A. Norton2, Kent C. Harris1, Thao T. Tran1, William H. Perman3, Daniel P. Weitekamp2, Brian D. Ross1, Pratip Bhattacharya1
1MRS, Huntington Medical Research Institutes, Pasadena, CA, USA; 2California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA; 3Radiology, Saint Louis University, Saint Louis, MO, USA
We report the NMR of hyperpolarized agents designed for chemically-specific interaction with receptor sites.. We demonstrate that C-13 hyperpolarized tetrafluoropropyl propionate (TFPP) binds to synthetic lipid bilayers inducing an additional MR resonance which is shifted by 3 ppm and is in slow exchange with the main resonance. We find that this signature of TFPP is specific for lipids but not for albumin the most abundant lipophilic serum protein. Moreover, 13C longitudinal spin relaxation under conditions of binding/exchange is >14 seconds, which is sufficient for potential in vivo applications (work in progress in our laboratory).