Carbon-13 Radiofrequency Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation of the Hyperpolarized Ketone and Hemiketal Forms of Allyl [1-C]Pyruvate.

C hyperpolarized pyruvate is an emerging MRI contrast agent for sensing molecular events in cancer and other diseases with aberrant metabolic pathways. This metabolic contrast agent can be produced via several hyperpolarization techniques. Despite remarkable success in research settings, widespread clinical adoption faces substantial roadblocks because the current sensing technology utilized to sense this contrast agent requires the excitation of C nuclear spins that also need to be synchronized with MRI field gradient pulses. Here, we demonstrate sensing of hyperpolarized allyl [1-C]pyruvate via the stimulated emission of radiation that mitigates the requirements currently blocking broader adoption. Specifically, C Radiofrequency Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (C RASER) was obtained after pairwise addition of parahydrogen to a pyruvate precursor, detected in a commercial inductive detector with a quality factor () of 32 for sample concentrations as low as 0.125 M with C polarization of 4%. Moreover, parahydrogen-induced polarization allowed for the preparation of a mixture of ketone and hemiketal forms of hyperpolarized allyl [1-C]pyruvate, which are separated by 10 ppm in C NMR spectra. This is a good model system to study the simultaneous C RASER signals of multiple C species. This system models the metabolic production of hyperpolarized [1-C]lactate from hyperpolarized [1-C]pyruvate, which has a similar chemical shift difference. Our results show that C RASER signals can be obtained from both species simultaneously when the emission threshold is exceeded for both species. On the other hand, when the emission threshold is exceeded only for one of the hyperpolarized species, C stimulated emission is confined to this species only, therefore enabling the background-free detection of individual hyperpolarized C signals. The reported results pave the way to novel sensing approaches of C hyperpolarized pyruvate, potentially unlocking hyperpolarized C MRI on virtually any MRI system─an attractive vision for the future molecular imaging and diagnostics.