Metabolic Imaging of Rare Nuclei As A New Tool For Cancer Diagnostics

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Marcel Utz
• Subject Area: Medical Physics, Biomedical Technology ; Physical Chemistry of Molecules, Liquids and Interfaces, Biophysical Chemistry
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554698523

Our main objective is to develop advanced methods for diagnosing cancer based on magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) with increased sensitivity and specificity. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an immensely important tool in medical diagnostics, providing a convenient means to obtain highly resolved images of soft tissue without the use of ionizing radiation. In addition to spatial images, MRSI provides chemical information, and can therefore report on local changes in the metabolism caused by disease. Conventional MRI is based on protons, which are highly abundant in tissue due to the content in water and fat. This makes detection of metabolites, which are much less abundant, extremely challenging. However, metabolic contrast agents that contain rare nuclei (e.g. 2H- or 13C-labelled glucose) can yield highly specific signals from their characteristic downstream metabolic products with very little background. This is highly valuable for diagnostics and treatment monitoring. However, further development and clinical exploitation of such methods requires two separate problems to be addressed: (i) The sensitivity of MRSI to signals from rare nuclei needs to be improved, and (ii) the metabolic fluxes of contrast agents and their metabolic products in healthy and diseased tissue must be understood better in order to design diagnostically useful radiological protocols based on MRSI. The proposed collaboration between two world-leading research groups takes aim at both of these challenges, by combining novel, highly optimized pulsed methods for MRSI with recent breakthroughs in microfluidic NMR spectroscopy. Breast cancer models based on spheroid culture will be used to characterize the metabolic kinetics of contrast agents in a controlled and highly reproducible environment. The resulting data will allow to calibrate in-vivo MRSI methods, which will be developed using mouse xenograft cancer models based on the same cell lines. Both the microfluidic NMR and the in-vivo MRSI work will be empowered by the development of novel, cryogenically cooled probe assemblies. The project brings together the profound expertise in microstructure technology and micro-NMR spectroscopy of the Utz group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with the world-leading know-how in magnetic resonance methodology, and in particular in MRSI methods, in the Frydman research group at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The proposed work will bring about a significant advance in magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging, leading to new and improved methods for cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment monitoring.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• International Co-Applicant: Professor Dr. Lucio Frydman