Cornelius von Morze1, Irene Marco-Rius1, Celine Baligand1, Robert Bok1, John Kurhanewicz1, Daniel Vigneron1, and Michael Abram Ohliger1,2
1Radiology and Biomedial Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States, 2UCSF Liver Center, San Francisco, CA, United States
We investigate the rapid metabolic conversion of hyperpolarized (HP)
[1-13C]α-ketobutyrate, a molecular
analog of pyruvate, in mouse liver in vivo as compared to [1-13C]pyruvate. Previously, it has been noted that in liver,
there is relatively less conversion of [1-13C]α-ketobutyrate to its
reduction product, [1-13C]hydroxybutyrate when compared to the
conversion of [1-13C]pyruvate to [1-13C]lactate. This
difference in conversion likely represents a different LDH activity in liver1.
In this study, we examine the decarboxylation of ketobyrate into bicarbonate,
which we have found to be unexpectedly elevated when compared to pyruvate,
presumably also via PDH and/or a related enzyme.
