34. Generalizing, Extending, and Maximizing Nitrogen-15 Hyperpolarization Induced by Parahydrogen in Reversible Exchange

Johannes F. P. Colell, Angus W. J. Loga, Zijian Zhou, Roman V. Shchepin, Danila A. Barskiy, Gerardo X. Ortiz Jr, Qiu Wang, Steven J. Malcolmson, Eduard Y. Chekmenev, Warren S. Warren, and Thomas Theis, Journal of Physical Chemistry, (2017) DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.6b12097

Signal Amplification by Reversible Exchange (SABRE) is a fast and convenient NMR hyperpolarization method that uses cheap and readily available para-hydrogen as a hyperpolarization source. SABRE can hyperpolarize protons and heteronuclei. Here we focus on the heteronuclear variant introduced as SABRE-SHEATH (SABRE in SHield Enables Alignment Transfer to Heteronuclei) and nitrogen-15 targets in particular. We show that 15N-SABRE works more efficiently and on a wider range of substrates than 1H-SABRE, greatly generalizing the SABRE approach. In addition, we show that nitrogen-15 offers significantly extended T1 times of up to 12 minutes. Long T1 times enable higher hyperpolarization levels but also hold the promise of hyperpolarized molecular imaging for several tens of minutes. Detailed characterization and optimization are presented, leading to nitrogen-15 polarization levels in excess of 10% on several compounds.