Presentation at the ENC conference this year

In this year's Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference, the CortecNet team presented their success in synthesizing multiple deuterated 2-deoxy-D-glucose (DDG) analogs. The ENC conference took place in Asilomar, CA, USA, on April 12-16, 2026.

The poster was uploaded to Zenodo with the DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20703391

Abstract

Deuterated 2-deoxy-D-glucose (DDG) MRI-based imaging agents

Positron emission tomography (PET) using 2-deoxy-2-[18F]fluoro-D-glucose (FDG) is effective for tumor staging, prognosis, and treatment monitoring, but its use is limited by ionizing radiation, making it unsuitable for frequent use and for certain populations, such as children and pregnant women. ​Deuterium Metabolic Imaging (DMI) is a chemical shift-based spectroscopic imaging technique used to map the distribution of a deuterium-labeled metabolite and its metabolic fates in a biological sample or subject within an MRI scanner [1, 3]. In DMI, deuterium-labeled glucose ([6,6-D2]D-glucose) has been administered to animals and humans, mostly per os (and intravenously in animals), and images of the metabolic fates of glucose, such as lactate and glutamine/glutamate, have been recorded [1]. Even though still limited in sensitivity (millimolar concentration), DMI can provide similar metabolic information as FDG-PET  

In this work, we are exploring the potential of a class of non-metabolizing imaging agents, deuterated 2-deoxy-D-glucose, with the goal to generate FDG-PET-like images, (i.e. medical images with the same image quality as FDG-PET), without ionising radiation at clinically acceptable scan times. ​We report here synthesis protocols and characterizations (mostly by 1H, 2H, and 13C NMR) of five DDGs, labeled with two to eight deuterons. The first 2H-MRI/MRS images and data obtained with these compounds will be shown.

Poster_ENC_2026_Corcos_DDG_MRI.pdf

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References

[1] HM De Feyter, et al., Science Advances 2018.

[2] B Grieb, et al., Sci. Rep. 2021.

[3] aYN Liu, et al., Magn. Reson. Med. 2022; bM Straathof, et al., Neuroscience 2021; cA Veltien, et al., Cancers 2021; dDC Peters, et al., Magn. Reson. Med. 2021; eF Kreis, et al., Radiology 2020; fF Hesse, et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2021.

Acknowledgment

This work has received funding from the European Innovation Council programme under the EU Horizon Europe programme, Project number 101185775, DDG-MRI.