Revealing the Hyperpolarized 129Xe Red Blood Cell Resonance Using Transgenic Mice

Matthew S. Freeman¹, Zackary I. Cleveland², Yi Qi², Bastiaan Driehuys, ¹²

Hyperpolarized 129Xe provides a unique means of probing gas exchange, being soluble in tissues and displaying a large in vivo chemical shift range. However, mice do not typically display a unique RBC resonance, as rats and humans do. For the first time, transgenic mice expressing for human hemoglobin display two dissolved-phase NMR peaks at 198 and 220 ppm, almost identical to the interstitial tissue and RBC peaks seen in humans. This enables visualization of pulmonary gas-exchange not previously possible in mice, providing global and regional physiological information about gas transit to the RBCs in mouse models of disease and injury.