Based on NMR on tissues, choline (Cho) and its derivatives, phosphocholine (PCho) and glycerophosphocholine (GPCho), have been suggested as biomarkers for cancer diagnoses. Much progress has been achieved in the diagnoses of breast cancer and prostate cancer. However, for cancer diagnoses of other tissues, it’s very difficult to measure Cho and its derivatives, because in 1H or 31P MRS the signals of these choline containing compounds (CCC) are poorly resolved from each other and not even able to be resolved from other metabolite signals.

With the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), the Biomolecular NMR research group of Wuhan Institute of Physics and mathematics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (WIPM, CAS), developed a new 2D 1H-14N NMR method, in cooperation with Dr. MAO Xi-an of Case Western Reserve University (Journal of Magnetic Resonance, 206(2010), 157-160). This method successfully resolves and measures CCC rapidly in solution.

Recently, they applied the new method to the CCC measurement in tissues, and obtained the 2D 1H-14N HSQC NMR spectrum of CCC in mouse liver. The signals of Cho, PCho, and GPCho were well separated in the spectrum, and the concentrations of CCC were obtained through comparison with the integral of signals of standard sample. The result showed this method had promising application in the CCC quantitative measurement of normal or pathological tissues. This study had been published in Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS, 132(2010), 17349–17351).

Two-dimensional 1H-14N HSQC spectrum of the mouse liver tissue (Image by WIPM)