Non-invasive measurement of lactate concentration in whole human breast tumours using advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS)

摘要

Breast cancer is the most common female malignancy in the UK, with 1 in 8 women diagnosed in their lifetime (1). The inadequacy in early markers for treatment response is a barrier to further improving patient care. Aerobic glycolysis (AG) is the central metabolic feature of tumour leading to elevated lactate production (2). Although lactate production can be assessed through lactate dehydrogenase A (LDH-A) in immunostaining (3), the method has to be performed on excised tissue or biopsy samples. To avoid partial sampling errors of biopsy measurement in heterogeneous tumours, a non-invasive method sensitive to the lactate concentration of the whole breast tumour is a desirable clinical tool for assessing AG. Double quantum filtered (DQF) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) (4), a specialist method recently translated into clinical research, allows measurements specific to lactate. We hypothesised that lactate concentration from DQF MRS can be a prognostic marker for breast tumours.