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High resolution magic angle spinning (MAS) 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra of whole pieces of human prostatic tissue (<40 mg per sample) from patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and malignant tumours have been obtained and compared with high resolution NMR solution state spectra obtained via a standard tissue extraction method. Well resolved MAS-NMR spectra of the tissue samples were obtained in which both cytosolic and membrane-related compounds could be identified. Two-dimensional 1H MAS-NMR measurements, including J-resolved and shift correlation spectra, were also obtained to allow metabolite signal assignment. In all cases high quality spectra were obtained that were rich in bioanalytical information on a wide range of intracellular metabolites and lipids. Marked differences were observed between MAS spectra from tumours versus BPH tissue, particularly in the lipid signals, which were much more intense in tumours. This was in contrast to the protein-free extracts of the same samples which showed much more similar NMR profiles for the two disease classes. These data indicate that MAS-NMR spectra of intact tissue biopsy samples give a wider range of bioanalytical information on small and large molecules than conventional, more labour intensive cell extraction procedures, and this strengthens the case for the use of MAS-NMR in clinical diagnostics.
Tomlins et al. (Thu,) studied this question.