The Kelly lab is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) R21 Trailblazer Award) to develop carbon 11 (11C)-labeled isotopologues of pyruvate for imaging prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is the most widely diagnosed cancer in men, yet few validated biomarkers for accurate disease staging, identification of novel therapeutic targets and monitoring response to therapy by non-invasive means exist. As prostate cancer transitions to androgen resistance and becomes more aggressive, it exhibits a glycolytic metabolic phenotype characterized by the reduction of pyruvate to lactate. The hypothesis of the project is that the radioactivity flux through cancer tissue will differ according to the metabolic phenotype and the position of the radiolabel. If successful, this work will identify a new method of metabolically phenotyping tissue in vivo, and the lab expects this technology to have applications beyond oncology.