Imaging of Hydroxyl-Radical Generation Using Dynamic Nuclear Polarization-Magnetic Resonance Imaging and a Spin-Trapping Agent

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play an important role in cell metabolism, but they can cause oxidative damage to biomolecules. Among ROS, the hydroxyl radical (·OH) is one of the most reactive molecules in biological systems because of its high reaction rate constant. Therefore, imaging of ·OH could be useful for evaluation of the redox mechanism and diagnosis of oxidative diseases. In vivo dynamic nuclear polarization-magnetic resonance imaging (DNP-MRI) is a noninvasive imaging method to obtain spatiotemporal information about free radicals with MRI anatomical resolution. In this study, we investigated the visualization of hydroxyl radicals generated from the Fenton reaction by combining DNP-MRI with a spin-trapping agent (DMPO: 5,5-dimethyl-1-pyrroline N-oxide) for ·OH. Additionally, we demonstrated the radical-scavenging effect using four thiol-related reagents by DNP-MRI. We demonstrated that DNP enhancement could be induced by the DMPO-OH radical using the DNP-MRI/spin-trapping method and visualized ·OH generation for the first time. Maximum DNP enhancement was observed at an electron paramagnetic resonance irradiation frequency of 474.5 MHz. Furthermore, the radical-scavenging effect was simultaneously evaluated by the decrease in the DNP image value of DMPO-OH. An advantage of our methods is that they simultaneously investigate compound activity and the radical-scavenging effect.