Metabolomic profiling highlights the metabolic bases of acute-on-chronic and post-hepatectomy liver failure

Serum metabolomic analyses reveal the potential metabolic biomarkers for prediction of amatoxin poisoning

Amatoxin poisoning leads to over 90% of deaths in mushroom poisoning. The objective of present study was to identify the potential metabolic biomarkers for early diagnosis of amatoxin poisoning. Serum samples were collected from 61 patients with amatoxin poisoning and 61 healthy controls. An untargeted metabolomics analysis was performed using the ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-QTOF-MS/MS). Multivariate statistical analysis revealed that the patients with amatoxin poisoning could be clearly separated from healthy controls on the basis of their metabolic fingerprints. There were 33 differential metabolites including 15 metabolites up-regulated metabolites and 18 down-regulated metabolites in patients with amatoxin poisoning compared to healthy controls. These metabolites mainly enriched in the lipid metabolism and amino acid metabolism pathways, such as Glycerophospholipid metabolism, Sphingolipid metabolism, Phenylalanine tyrosine and typtophan biosynthesis, Tyrosine metabolism, Arginine and proline metabolism, which may serve important roles in the amatoxin poisoning. Among the differential metabolites, a total of 8 significant metabolic markers were identified for discriminating patients with amatoxin poisoning from healthy controls, including Glycochenodeoxycholate-3-sulfate (GCDCA-S), 11-Oxo-androsterone glucuronide, Neomenthol-glucuronide, Dehydroisoandrosterone 3-glucuronide, Glucose 6-phosphate (G6P), Lanthionine ketimine, Glycerophosphocholine (GPC) and Nicotinamide ribotide, which achieved satisfactory diagnostic accuracy (AUC>0.8) in both discovery and validation cohorts. Strikingly, the Pearson's correlation analysis indicated that 11-Oxo-androsterone glucuronide, G6P and GCDCA-S were positively correlated with the liver injury induced by amatoxin poisoning. The findings of the current study may provide insight into the pathological mechanism of amatoxin poisoning and screened out the reliable metabolic biomarkers to contribute the clinical early diagnosis of amatoxin poisoning.

Integrated metabolomics and phosphoproteomics reveal the protective role of exosomes from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells in naturally aging mouse livers

BACKGROUND

Aging is characterized by a general decline in cellular function, which ultimately affects whole body homeostasis. This study aimed to investigate the effects and underlying mechanisms of exosomes derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hUCMSC-exos) on the livers of naturally aging mice.

METHOD

Twenty-two-month-old C57BL6 mice were used as a natural aging animal model, divided into a saline-treated wild-type aged control group (WT-AC) and a hUCMSC-exo-treated group (WT-AEX), and then detected by morphology, metabolomics and phosphoproteomics.

RESULTS

Morphological analysis showed that hUCMSC-exos ameliorated structural disorder and decreased markers of senescence and genome instability in aging livers. Metabolomics showed that hUCMSC-exos decreased the contents of saturated glycerophospholipids, palmitoyl-glycerols and eicosanoid derivatives associated with lipotoxicity and inflammation, consistent with the decreased phosphorylation of metabolic enzymes, such as propionate-CoA ligase (Acss2), at S267 detected by phosphoproteomics. Moreover, phosphoproteomics indicated that hUCMSC-exos reduced the phosphorylation of proteins participating in nuclear transport and cancer signaling, such as heat shock protein HSP90-beta (Hsp90ab1) at S226 and nucleoprotein TPR (Tpr) at S453 and S379, while increasing those involved in intracellular communication, such as calnexin (Canx) at S563 and PDZ domain-containing protein 8 (Pdzd8). Finally, phosphorylated HSP90β and Tpr were verified predominantly in hepatocytes.

CONCLUSION

HUCMSC-exos improved metabolic reprogramming and genome stability mainly associated with phosphorylated HSP90β in hepatocytes in natural aging livers. This work provides a comprehensive resource of biological data by omics to support future investigations of hUCMSC-exos in aging.

Systematic Review of NMR-Based Metabolomics Practices in Human Disease Research

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the principal analytical techniques for metabolomics. It has the advantages of minimal sample preparation and high reproducibility, making it an ideal technique for generating large amounts of metabolomics data for biobanks and large-scale studies. Metabolomics is a popular “omics” technology and has established itself as a comprehensive exploratory biomarker tool; however, it has yet to reach its collaborative potential in data collation due to the lack of standardisation of the metabolomics workflow seen across small-scale studies. This systematic review compiles the different NMR metabolomics methods used for serum, plasma, and urine studies, from sample collection to data analysis, that were most popularly employed over a two-year period in 2019 and 2020. It also outlines how these methods influence the raw data and the downstream interpretations, and the importance of reporting for reproducibility and result validation. This review can act as a valuable summary of NMR metabolomic workflows that are actively used in human biofluid research and will help guide the workflow choice for future research.

Metabolomics: An emerging potential approach to decipher critical illnesses

Critical illnesses contribute to the maximum morbidity and mortality of hospitalized patients. Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis/septic shock are the two most common acute illnesses associated with intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Once triggered, both have an identical underlying mechanism, portrayed by inflammation and endothelial dysfunction. The diagnosis of ARDS is based on clinical findings, laboratory tests, and radiological imaging. Blood cultures remain the gold standard for the diagnosis of sepsis, with the limitation of time delay and low positive yield. A combination of biomarkers has been proposed to diagnose and prognosticate these acute disorders with strengths and limitations, but still, the gold standard has been elusive to clinicians. In this review article, we illustrate the potential of metabolomics to unravel biomarkers that can be clinically utilized as a rapid prognostic and diagnostic tool associated with specific patient populations (ARDS and sepsis/septic shock) based on the available scientific data.