Detecting acetylated aminoacids in blood serum using hyperpolarized ¹³C-¹Η-2D-NMR

Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) can substantially enhance the sensitivity of NMR experiments. Among the implementations of DNP, ex-situ dissolution DNP (dDNP) achieves high signal enhancement levels owing to a combination of a large temperature factor between 1.4 and 300 K with the actual DNP effect in the solid state at 1.4 K. For sufficiently long T₁ relaxation times much of the polarization can be preserved during dissolution with hot solvent, thus enabling fast experiments during the life time of the polarization. Unfortunately, for many metabolites found in biological samples such as blood, relaxation times are too short to achieve a significant enhancement. We have therefore introduced ¹³C-carbonyl labeled acetyl groups as probes into amino acid metabolites using a simple reaction protocol. The advantage of such tags is a sufficiently long T₁ relaxation time, the possibility to enhance signal intensity by introducing ¹³C, and the possibility to identify tagged metabolites in NMR spectra. We demonstrate feasibility for mixtures of amino acids and for blood serum. In two-dimensional dDNP-enhanced HMQC experiments of these samples acquired in 8 s we can identify acetylated amino acids and other metabolites based on small differences in chemical shifts.