Detecting treatment response in cancer using hyperpolarised magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)Patients with similar tumour types can show very different responses to the same therapy. The development of new treatments would benefit, therefore, from the introduction of imaging methods that allow an early assessment of treatment response in individual patients, allowing rapid selection of the most effective treatment. (360G-Wellcome-095962_Z_11_Z)

Conventional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which produces images of tissue morphology by mapping the distribution of water molecules, can be used to detect tumours and monitor their responses to treatment by measuring reduction in tumour size. However, changes in tumour size may take many weeks to become manifest, and with some treatments may not occur at all despite a positive response to treatment. MRI can also be used to detect tumour metabolites in vivo, using magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging techniques. However, these metabolites are present at ~10,000x lower concentration than tissue water, which makes them hard to detect and difficult to image, except at relatively low resolution. Professor Kevin Brindle and his colleagues in Cambridge have been developing a technique in collaboration with GE Healthcare, termed “hyperpolarisation”, which increases the sensitivity of MRI by 10,000 – 100,000x. With this technique they inject a hyperpolarised 13C-labelled molecule and now have sufficient sensitivity to image its distribution in the body and the distribution of the metabolites produced from it, effectively providing a real-time readout of tissue metabolism. They have shown, in preclinical studies, that they can detect very early evidence of treatment response in tumours by using this technique to monitor changes in tumour metabolism. The team have been awarded ~£4.3M of translational funding to take this technology from the laboratory to the clinic, where they will investigate its potential for detecting early evidence of treatment response in lymphoma, glioma and breast cancer patients.