A new deuterium-labeled compound [2,3,4,6,6'-2 H5 ]-D-glucose for deuterium magnetic resonance metabolic imaging.

Deuterium (2 H) magnetic resonance imaging is an emerging approach for noninvasively studying glucose metabolism in vivo, which is important for understanding pathogenesis and monitoring the progression of many diseases such as tumors, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. However, the synthesis of 2 H-labeled glucose is costly because of the expensive raw substrates and the requirement for extreme reaction conditions, making the 2 H-labeled glucose rather expensive and unaffordable for clinic use. In this study, we present a new deuterated compound, [2,3,4,6,6'-2 H5 ]-D-glucose, with an approximate 10-fold reduction in production costs. The synthesis route uses cheaper raw substrate methyl-α-D-glucopyranoside, relies on mild reaction conditions (80°C), and has higher deuterium labeling efficiency. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and mass spectroscopy experiments confirmed the successful deuterium labeling in the compound. Animal studies demonstrated that the substrate could describe the glycolytic metabolism in a glioma rat model by quantifying the downstream metabolites through 2 H-MRS on an ultrahigh field system. Comparison of the glucose metabolism characteristics was carried out between [2,3,4,6,6'-2 H5 ]-D-glucose and commercial [6,6'-2 H2 ]-D-glucose in the animal studies. This cost-effective compound will help facilitate the clinical translation of deuterium magnetic resonance imaging, and enable this powerful metabolic imaging modality to be widely used in both preclinical and clinical research and applications.

Proton/Deuterium Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Rodents at 9.4T Using Birdcage Coils.

The purpose of the present study was to fabricate a volume coil for proton/deuterium magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in rodents at 9.4 T. Two birdcage radiofrequency (RF) coils have been designed for proton/deuterium MRI: the rungs of two concentric birdcages were azimuthally interleaved with each other for better decoupling, and the two coils were tuned to 400.3 and 61.4 MHz for 1 H/2 H resonance at 9.4 T. Compared to a commercially available coil, the proposed 1 H/2 H RF coil provides reasonable transmission efficiency and imaging signal-to-noise ratio (SNR); the relationships among imaging parameters such as SNR, voxel size, and deuterium oxide concentrations have been quantitatively studied, and the linear correlation results together with the spectroscopic data in vivo indicate its feasibility in deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) in vivo. Our study indicates that using the birdcage design for MRI signal excitation combined with surface coil array for signal reception can facilitate DMI investigations more effectively towards future pre-clinical and clinical applications. As a noninvasive method by measuring nonhydrogen nuclear deuterium signals to reflect metabolite information, DMI will feature prominently in future precision medicine through the whole process of diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis. © 2021 Bioelectromagnetics Society.