Abstract #2959

Metabolic Biomarkers of TERT expression in glioblastoma

Vinay Ayyappan¹, Georgios Batsios², Nick Stevers³, Abigail R Molloy², Aliya A Lakhani², Joseph F Costello³, Pavithra Viswanath², and Sabrina M Ronen²

¹John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, ²Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, ³Neurological Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States

Expression of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) is essential for tumor proliferation, including in primary glioblastomas. Inhibiting TERT expression is also a therapeutic strategy for glioblastomas. The goal of this study was to identify non-invasive magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS)-detectable metabolic biomarkers of TERT expression in glioblastoma cells. Our studies indicate that TERT expression is linked to redox, as indicated by higher ¹H MRS-detectable reduced glutathione, and higher ¹³C MRS-detectable flux of glucose via the pentose phosphate pathway in TERT-expressing GBM cells. Hyperpolarized [U-¹³C, U-²H]glucose can monitor TERT expression in GBM cells, and may serve to noninvasively probe TERT expression in glioblastomas.

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