Cornelius von Morze1, Peder E Larson1, Michael A Ohliger1, Ralph E Hurd2, John Kurhanewicz1, and Daniel B Vigneron1
1Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 2GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States
The purpose of this abstract was to investigate pool
size effects in experiments with hyperpolarized [13C]α-ketobutyrate (αKB), a molecular analog of pyruvate which also has
substantial activity with LDH. In contrast to pyruvate, formation of the
reduction product [13C]α-hydroxybutyrate (αHB) necessarily reflects net metabolic flux as opposed
to label exchange. We observed little change when co-injecting αHB but a large increase in the αHB-to-αKB ratio
when co-injecting lactate. This suggests that the observed conversion of αKB to αHB only reflects
net metabolic flux even in the presence of a large pool of reduction product.
