High resolution magic angle spinning 1H NMR of childhood brain and nervous system tumours

Abstract

Abstract Background Brain and nervous system tumours are the most common solid cancers in children. Molecular characterisation of these tumours is important for providing novel biomarkers of disease and identifying molecular pathways which may provide putative targets for new therapies. 1H magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy (1H HR-MAS) is a powerful tool for determining metabolite profiles from small pieces of intact tissue and could potentially provide important molecular information. Methods Forty tissue samples from 29 children with glial and primitive neuro-ectodermal tumours were analysed using HR-MAS (600 MHz Varian gHX nanoprobe). Tumour spectra were fitted to a library of individual metabolite spectra to provide metabolite values. These values were then used in a two tailed t-test and multi-variate analysis employing a principal component analysis and a linear discriminant analysis. Classification accuracy was estimated using a leave-one-out analysis and B632+ bootstrapping. Results Glial tumours had significantly (two tailed t-test p Conclusion HR-MAS identified key differences in the metabolite profiles of childhood brain and nervous system improving the molecular characterisation of these tumours. Further investigation of the underlying molecular pathways is required to assess their potential as targets for new agents.