Tracing cerebral metabolism in health and neurodegeneration

Senior Scientist Mathilde Hauge Lerche, Department of Health Technology, DTU

There is increasing evidence that alterations in brain metabolism precedes disease processes and thus may be an early-stage biomarker. Hyperpolarized ¹³C magnetic resonance imaging is an emerging clinical technique that may add specificity, spatial and temporal advances to conventional ¹H MRI through metabolite specific signal enhancement and thereby provide novel insights into neurometabolism in health and in neuropathology. To fully take advantage of this technique we study the metabolism in brain models of different complexity as well as the fingerprints of specific bioprobes using complementing analytical techniques. We apply combined tracer NMR for assessing steady-state concentrations and metabolic flux through high concentration metabolites and GC-MS to detect relative amounts of low concentration metabolites.

In this talk I will review state-of-the-art cerebral metabolism traced with real time ¹³C hyperpolarized metabolic imaging and discuss the analytical tool-box that we make use of to further develop this technology.

Host: Associate Professor Frans Mulder