We are pleased to announce the continuation of our Kiel Imaging Seminar (KIS)! The fourth presentation in this series will take place on Monday, Feb. 6th.

When: Monday, Feb. 6th, 18h CET (GMT +1)

Where: https://uni-kiel.zoom.us/j/65020290478?pwd=ZVRXQU5pZUY1QUJ6THR3bEZBOWJZdz09 (ID: 650 2029 0478, Password: 115085)

Who: Prof. Ferdia Gallagher, University of Cambridge, UK

What: Expert lecture on “Imaging metabolism and metabolic heterogeneity in tumours” 

- Prof. Ferdia Gallagher, web page University of Cambridge

- Sushentsev, Nikita et al. “Hyperpolarised 13C-MRI identifies the emergence of a glycolytic cell population within intermediate-risk human prostate cancer.” Nature communications vol. 13,1 466. 2022. 

- Woitek, Ramona et al. “Hyperpolarized Carbon-13 MRI for Early Response Assessment of Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer Patients.” Cancer research vol. 81,23 (2021): 6004-6017.

About the presenter:

Prof. Ferdia Gallagher, studied Medicine and Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and Cambridge, and is an academic radiologist and a CRUK-funded Senior Research Fellow leading the Clinical Molecular Imaging Group in the Department of Radiology at the University of Cambridge, UK. His laboratory develops new functional and molecular imaging methods to detect cancer and early response to therapy, with the aim of translating these techniques into humans. The team is especially interested in methods to probe cancer metabolism non-invasively such as clinical hyperpolarised carbon-13 MRI. The group is also interested in the application of proton spectroscopy to study tumour metabolism, as well as other multinuclear and multimodality approaches such as sodium MRI and PET/CT.

About the presentation:

Imaging metabolism and metabolic heterogeneity in tumours – There is increasing evidence to support a role for metabolism in tumour development, and deregulation of cellular energetics is an established hallmark of cancer. Changes in tumour metabolism are early biomarkers of successful response to both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. There are several clinical imaging methods that can be used to probe cancer metabolism and this talk will focus on the role of MR in phenotyping cancer metabolism and its heterogeneity, particularly to grade tumours and detect early response to therapy. For example, proton MR spectroscopy (1H-MRS) has been used to detect oncometabolites in a range of tumours secondary to mutations in mitochondrial enzymes. 1H-MRS can be used to detect fumarate and succinate due to mutations in fumarate hydratase and succinate dehydrogenase respectively, as well as changes over time following treatment. 

Hyperpolarized carbon-13 MRI (13C-MRI) is an emerging non-invasive imaging method for studying metabolism. This technique allows non-invasive measurements of tissue metabolism in real-time, with pyruvate being the most promising clinical hyperpolarized carbon-13 probe, which is rapidly metabolized into lactate in most tumours. This talk will present how changes in hyperpolarized lactate can be used to identify aggressive breast, renal, and prostate cancers, as well as early response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer. By correlating imaging with tissue-based measures of metabolism, the molecular basis for these changes in lactate is increasingly being understood, including the role of the pyruvate transporter (MCT1), lactate exporter (MCT4), and the enzyme lactate dehydrogenase (LDH).

 More recently, deuterium metabolic imaging (DMI) has been used to study the metabolism of oral deuterated glucose and the presentation will show how this technique compares to hyperpolarised carbon-13 MRI based metrics of oxidative and reductive metabolism in the brain at clinical field strength. New imaging methods such as these to probe tumour metabolism could play an important role in stratifying tumours and detecting response to therapy, particularly in the context of developing targeted therapies against key tumour metabolic pathways.

Please note that we intend to record and publish the session.

We are looking forward to meeting you!

Your Section Biomedical Imaging

Clinic for Radiology and Neuroradiology, Univ. Medical Center SH, Kiel University.