Hyla Allouche-Arnon1, Aaron K. Grant2,
Elena Vinogradov2, Xiaoen Wang3, Robert E. Lenkinski3,
Ayelet Gamliel1, Ruppen Nalbandian1, Lucio Frydman4,
John Moshe Gomori1, Claudia Monica Barzilay5, Rachel
Katz-Brull1,6
1Department of Radiology, Hadassah
Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, Israel; 2Department
of Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School,
Boston,, MA, United States; 3Department of Radiology, Beth Israel
Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; 4Department
of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; 5Medicinal
Chemistry-School of Pharmacy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
Israel; 6BrainWatch Ltd., Tel-Aviv, Israel
Choline
metabolism is known to be altered in neurodegeneration and malignancy. In
order to enable the monitoring of choline metabolism in a direct and non-invasive
manner in vivo, a stable-isotope
labeled analog of choline namely, [1,1,2,2-D4,2-13C]-choline
chloride, was designed and implemented for hyperpolarized magnetic resonance
applications. The position enriched with 13C in this molecule
presents with both a long T1 (35 sec) and a chemical shift that
differentiates choline from its metabolites. Here we report on the first in vivo studies of carbon-13
hyperpolarized [1,1,2,2-D4,2-13C]-choline
that suggest it is a promising new agent for metabolic imaging by MRI and
MRSI.