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Translational in-vivo MR-imaging platform to facilitate metabolic drug discovery: a report summarizing subtle in-vivo MR-visible biomarkers across head to toe in rodents
Sekar Sakthivel, Senior Research Fellow, Singapore Bioimaging Consortium (SBIC), A*STAR
Metabolic disorders (i.e diabetes & obesity) are emerging as a major health and financial burden globally. Advances in imaging technologies in recent years, such as in MR-imaging, have a potential role to non-invasively characterize the progressive complications of such metabolic disorders.
In the present study, hyperglycemia was induced in a cohort of male Wistar rats with Streptozotocin (STZ, 60 mg/kg, IV). Blood glucose & HbA1c levels were monitored to document the chronic uncontrolled hyperglycemia. Advanced in-vivo MR-Imaging readouts were developed at UHF 7T & 9.4T systems in order to characterize unique subtle MR-visible in-vivo biomarkers, to study the progression of dysfunction. These included MR spectroscopy, Arterial Spin Labeling-perfusion (ASL), Diffusion Weighted Imaging, Strain Imaging (MR-Tagging), etc., in order to systematically study vital organs including the Brain, Heart, Liver, Kidney and the Eye (head-to-toe).
Significant volumetric and metabolic changes were observed in these vital organs. These changes included, atrophic changes in the brain, circumferential strain and end diastolic volume changes in the heart, volume increase and perfusion decrease in the kidney, and total water content in the eye. Furthermore significant metabolite changes such as glutathione and myoinositol in the brain, as well as significant changes in liver lipid contents were documented.
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