Online 1 H‐MRS measurements of time‐varying lactate production in an animal model of glioma during administration of an anti‐tumoral drug

International audienceThe aims of this study were to implement a magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) protocol for the online profiling of subnanomolar quantities of metabolites sampled from the extracellular fluid using implanted microdialysis and to apply this protocol in glioma‐bearing rats for the quantification of lactate concentration and the measurement of time‐varying lactate concentration during drug administration. MRS acquisitions on the brain microdialysate were performed using a home‐built, proton‐tuned, microsolenoid with an active volume of 2 μL. The microcoil was placed at the outlet of the microdialysis probe inside a preclinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. C6‐bearing rats were implanted with microdialysis probes perfused with artificial cerebrospinal fluid solution and the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) inhibitor oxamate. Microcoil magnetic resonance spectra were continuously updated using a single‐pulse sequence. Localized in vivo spectra and high‐resolution spectra on the dialysate were also acquired. The limit of detection and limit of quantification per unit time of the lactate methyl peak were determined as 0.37 nmol/√min and 1.23 nmol/√min, respectively. Signal‐to‐noise ratios (SNRs) of the lactate methyl peak above 120 were obtained from brain tumor microdialysate in an acquisition time of 4 min. On average, the lactate methyl peak amplitude measured in vivo using the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) microcoil was 193 ± 46% higher in tumor dialysate relative to healthy brain dialysate. A similar ratio was obtained from high‐resolution NMR spectra performed on the collected dialysate. Following oxamate addition in the perfusate, a monotonic decrease in the lactate peaks was observed in all animals with an average time constant of 4.6 min. In the absence of overlapping NMR peaks, robust profiling of extracellular lactate can be obtained online using a dedicated sensitive NMR microcoil. MRS measurements of the dynamic changes in lactate production induced by anti‐tumoral drugs can be assessed accurately with temporal resolutions on the order of minutes. The MRS protocol can be readily transferred to the clinical environment with the use of suitable clinical microdialysis probes. KEYWORDS glioblastoma, in vivo MRI and MRS, lactate, metabolite profiling, microcoil, microdialysi