Andre F. Martins

a close up of a woman standing in front of a microphone making a funny face . ALT: a close up of a woman standing in front of a microphone making a funny face .

RIP Ozzy. 🤘 My late-late-nights lab buddy. He bit the head off my sleep schedule years ago. 🦇⚗️🧪

I am so jealous but grateful that @Remy Chiaffarelli and @kimiasm.bsky.social are representing our lab so well. If you are attending the @ismrm.bsky.social in Hawaii, go see these 2 rock stars. 💪✌️👏🌺

Are you looking for a #PhD or #Postdoc in #computational #neuroscience and #machinelearning for developing new models for testing theories of efficient coding? Join our team @hertie-ai.bsky.social at @unituebingen.bsky.social @ml4science.bsky.social!

jobs.medizin.uni-tuebingen.de/Job/5996/Pos...

Attending the conference #THINC Translational Hyperpolarized Imaging: Network and Conference at the beautiful Barcelona. Great discussions led by amazing speakers. Can't wait to see the Sagrada Familia! #metabolism #Imaging #molecularimaging

Big news! I’m an associate editor at NPJ Imaging! 🎉 Took me 2 months to announce it, but hey—better late than never. 😆

To celebrate, I’m launching a Call for Papers! Got cool research on metabolism + imaging? Send it our way! 🧠📸🔬 www.nature.com/collections/...
#metabolism @wsic.bsky.social

A lab member brought these delicious cookies today! Trick or treat? Which one is your favorite? I got the zinc one. 🧪⚗️ @wsic.bsky.social

Thank you! ☺️

The Martins Lab developed a new family of Shift Reagents to assess the accumulation of lactate in the tumor microenvironment using #CEST #MRI. These contrast agents, highly stable and with potential for clinical translation, offer a new point of view into the compartmentalization of tumor metabolism

Metabolic PCTA-Based Shift Reagents for the Detection of Extracellular Lactate Using CEST MRI Lactate is a key metabolic driver in oncology and immunology. Even in the presence of physiological oxygen levels, most cancer cells upregulate anaerobic glycolysis, resulting in abnormal lactate production and accumulation in the tumor microenvironment. The development of more effective, sensitive, and safe probes for detecting extracellular lactate holds the potential to significantly impact cancer metabolic profiling and staging significantly. Macrocyclic-based PARACEST agents have been reported to act as shift reagents (SRs) and detect extracellular lactate via chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI. Here, we introduce a new family of SRs based on the PCTA ligand, an inherently stable and kinetically inert group of molecules with the potential for (pre)clinical translation. We observed that Yb-PCTA and Eu-PCTA can significantly shift lactate –OH signals in the CEST spectra. In vitro, CEST MRI experiments proved that imaging extracellular lactate specifically with these complexes is feasible even in the presence of competing small metabolites in blood and in the tumor microenvironment. In vivo preclinical imaging showed that Yb-PCTA can be safely administered intravenously in mice to detect extracellular lactate noninvasively. This work contributes to the field of precision imaging in medicine and provides evidence that the PCTA-ligand is a valuable scaffold for developing molecular and metabolic imaging sensors.

The link again: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

And more is yet to come! Stay tuned to the next developments from the team on compartmentalized metabolism. 🙂

Check out our latest publication on this discovery and its potential impact: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja… @pubs.acs.org @acs.org #Metabolism #MRI #CEST #Cancer

That unexpected result sparked years of work @unituebingen.bsky.social @wsic.bsky.social developed better, safer agents and now have a clear way to detect extracellular lactate in tissues—including tumors. A small experiment led to something really cool!

I asked the student to mix metabolites with an inglorious contrast agent and check CEST signals at wider NMR regions. Expecting maybe one bound water signal, we never imagined seeing the OH from lactate shift so clearly away from water—with a beautifully defined CEST!

Sometimes, the best discoveries start with curiosity! A few years ago, a motivated high school student joined the lab to explore lanthanide-induced shifts in metabolites. What happened next took us by surprise… 🧵👇

Big thanks to the @WSS for highlighting our work—proof that powerful combinations aren’t just for cocktails! 🫢 Stay tuned for the next advances in hybrid metabolic PET/MRI! www.wernersiemens-stiftung.ch/en/news/deta...
@unituebingen.bsky.social @iocbprague.bsky.social @siemens-ring.bsky.social

Happy Thanksgiving for y'all! 🦃🍻🎊

Me also!