Abstract
Purpose: Tools that will help unraveling the complexity of Bronchiolitis Obliterans Syndrome (BOS) and identifying useful predictive markers are urgently needed. Given its ability of capturing disease-relevant metabolic profile changes, Metabolomics may occupy an important role in this area.
Methods: BALf was obtained fromlung transplant patients, before and after BOS development,and from subjects affected by other respiratory diseases. Samples were submitted to NMR analyses,through the acquisition of mono and bi-dimensional spectra allowing the observation of 1H and 13C nuclei.
Results: Analyses were performed on both BAL and BALf from patients with different respiratory conditions (58 BOS, 4 sarcoidosis, 4 AAE, 2 pulmonary nodules). Exploiting the combination of mono and 2-Dexperiments, NMRspectra allowed the unequivocal identification and quantification of 36 polar metabolites,includingaminoacids, monosaccharides, nucleotides, Krebs cycle intermediates and phospholipid precursors. The resonances of about 10 additional metabolites have not been assigned yet. Fluctuations in the concentration of specific metabolites were observed not only among subjects with different pathologies but also within the cohort of BOS patients.
Conclusions: These preliminary results,while underlining the potential of NMR to identify biomarkers of lung pathologies,strongly support the conviction that this analysis onBALf from BOS patients may provide metabolic signatures of the disease. We demonstrate thatNMR is also suitable to perform metabolic profiling ofBALincluding cells and fluid components.
Acknowledgements: supported by a CARIPLO (Milan, Italy) grant#2013-0820, Bando 2013-Ricerca Medica.
- Copyright ©the authors 2016