Deoxyglucose

2-Deoxy-D-glucose is a glucose molecule which has the 2-hydroxyl group replaced by hydrogen, so that it cannot undergo further glycolysis. Glucose hexokinase traps this substance in most cells (with exception of liver and kidney) so that it makes a good marker for tissue glucose use and hexokinase activity. Many cancers have elevated glucose uptake and hexokinase levels. 2-Deoxyglucose labeled with tritium or carbon-14 has been a popular ligand for laboratory research in animal models, where distribution is assessed by tissue-slicing followed by autoradiography, sometimes in tandem with either conventional or electron microscopy.

2-DG is uptaken by the glucose transporters of the cell. Therefore, cells with higher glucose uptake, for example tumor cells, have also a higher uptake of 2-DG. Since 2-DG hampers cell growth, its use as as tumor therapeutic has been suggested, and in fact, 2-DG is in clinical trials However, it is not completely clear how 2-DG inhibits cell growth. The fact that glycolysis is inhibited by 2-DG, seems not to be sufficient to explain why 2-DG treated cells stop growing

Work on the ketogenic diet as a treatment for epilepsy have investigated the role of glycolysis in the disease. 2-Deoxyglucose has been proposed by Garriga-Canut et al. as a mimic for the ketogenic diet, and shows great promise as a new anti-epileptic drug. The authors suggest that 2-DG works, in part, by decreasing the expression of Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Such uses are complicated by the fact that 2-deoxyglucose does have some toxicity.

In living systems, such as in medical imaging (PET scanning), fluorodeoxyglucose is used, where one of the 2-hydrogens of 2-deoxy-D-glucose is replaced with the positron-emitting isotope fluorine-18, which emits paired gamma rays, allowing distribution of the tracer to be imaged by external gamma camera(s). This is increasingly done in tandem with a CT function which is part of the same PET/CT machine, to allow better localization of small-volume tissue glucose-uptake differences.