Hyperpolarized Carbon-13 Diagnostic MRI of Cysteine Uptake and Metabolism in Renal Cancer
Abstract
Kidney cancer is among the ten most common forms of cancer in American men and women. Early and accurate diagnosis of kidney cancer is of paramount importance to guide proper therapeutic intervention and reduce the mortality rate. While there are currently great diagnostic tools for this disease, there are definitely some gaps as to the accuracy, precision, and level of diagnostic information that can be gathered for the detection and assessment of this complicated disease. Responding to this diagnostic need, this study seeks to take advantage of the abnormal cystine metabolism in kidney cancer and turn it into its diagnostic Achilles heel. Cystine is the dietary form of the amino acid cysteine and the majority of kidney tumors are addicted to this nutrient. This project will utilize a technology called hyperpolarization that has the ability to amplify the magnetic resonance imaging signals by >10,000-fold. The use of hyperpolarized cystine with supercharged MRI signals could potentially offer a new kind of diagnostic molecular imaging for kidney cancer. The main innovation of this project is that, for the first time, this non-invasive technique has the capability to potentially map out the high cystine uptake in kidney cancer for detection, but also to provide further information as to what happens to this nutrient as it undergoes hyperdrive metabolism in renal tumors. It is expected that elevated levels of cystine metabolic products will correlate with the hyperactive metabolic machinery of kidney cancer. This project has the potential to provide a non-invasive in vivo imaging technique to look at this large subset of renal tumors light up in MRI like a cystine sponge as well as tracking the expected elevated levels of cystine metabolites at the molecular level. Such capability would be considered a high-caliber diagnostic tool needed to detect and assess a complicated disease such as kidney cancer. Since cystine is an endogenous compound and will be administered at physiological concentrations, there is a high propensity that this potential MRI biomarker for renal cancer can be translated for use in the clinic. This project could potentially close the current gap on the dearth of non-invasive in vivo diagnostic imaging methods that reveal metabolic information with high biochemical specificity, on top of detecting and locating the renal tumors. The main impact of this research is that it could potentially provide a more clear-cut, non-invasive, and non-radioactive molecular imaging tool for precise detection and diagnostic assessment of a large subset of kidney cancer patients using a biocompatible agent.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 05, 2021
- Source ID
- W81XWH2110176
Entities
People
- Lloyd Lumata
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of Texas at Dallas