Metabolic alterations in bladder cancer: applications for cancer imaging

Treatment planning, outcome and prognosis are strongly related to the adequate tumor staging for bladder cancer (BC). Unfortunately, a large discrepancy exists between the preoperative clinical and final pathologic staging. Therefore, an advanced imaging-based technique is crucial for adequate staging. Although Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is currently the best in vivo imaging technique for BC staging because of its excellent soft-tissue contrast and absence of ionizing radiation it lacks cancer-specificity. Tumor-specific positron emission tomography (PET), which is based on the Warburg effect (preferential uptake of glucose by cancer cells), exploits the radioactively–labeled glucose analogs, i.e., FDG. Although FDG-PET is highly cancer specific, it lacks resolution and contrast quality comparable with MRI. Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) MRI enables the detection of low concentrations of metabolites containing protons. BC is an attractive target for glucose CEST MRI because, in addition to the typical systemic administration, glucose might also be directly applied into the bladder to reduce toxicity-related complications. As a first stage of the development of a contrast-specific BC imaging technique we have studied glucose uptake by bladder epithelial cells and have observed that glucose is, indeed, consumed by BC cells with higher intensity than by non-transformed urothelial cells. This effect might be partly explained by increased expression of glucose transporters GLUT1 and GLUT3 in transformed cells as compared to normal urothelium. We also detected higher lactate production by BC cells which is another cancer-specific manifestation of the Warburg effect. In addition, we have observed other metabolic alterations in BC cells as compared to non-transformed cells: in particular, increased pyruvate synthesis. When glucose was substituted by glutamine in culture media, preferential uptake of glutamine by BC cells was observed. The preferential uptake of glucose by BC cells gives an opportunity to develop NMR based imaging procedures where glucose or its derivatives can serve as a contrasting agent. In addition, metabolic alterations observed in BC cells could provide the basis for development of new anti-cancer therapeutics.