Interrogation of glioma metabolism on macroscale by FLIM

This paper presents ex-vivo investigation of the brain tumors, namely glioblastoma and anaplastic astrocytoma, by macroscopic fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) of endogenous metabolic cofactor nicotine amide dinucleotide (phosphate), NAD(P)H. The results of the study on the rat models indicate that the metabolism in brain tumors differs between tumor types and differs from normal brain tissue. It was also found that the brain tumors have specific optical metabolic signatures that differ them from most solid tumors, underling the complexity of glioma metabolism. The approach used in the experiments shows prospects to determine the surgical margins of gliomas and to investigate metabolic heterogeneity of the tumors on a macroscale. However, one has to be careful in the interpretation of the data obtained by FLIM.