Multiscale imaging of tumor and immune metabolism.

 Cambridge and NIH have strong pre-clinical and clinical research programs. Both teams are developing novel methods to image metabolism in vivo and from tissue samples. The tools to be used as part of this project include hyperpolarised carbon-13 MRI and deuterium metabolic imaging for non-invasive imaging, as well as bulk mass spectrometry, mass spectrometry imaging and NMR on tissue extracts. The teams will combine expertise to study how these methods can be used to probe the spatial distribution of metabolism in tumour and immune compartments using both pre-clinical and clinical models of cancer. The goal is to use more accurately phenotype cancer using metabolism, and to detect early changes in this metabolism in space and time as biomarkers of successful response to therapy. Ultimately this will be used to improve the management of patients with a wide range of cancers where metabolism is known to play a significant role.