Opisthorchiasis, is a hepatobiliary disease caused by flukes of the trematode family Opisthorchiidae. A chronic form of the disease implies a prolonged coexistence of a host and the parasite. The pathological changes inflicted by the worm to the host's hepatobiliary system are well documented. Yet, the response to the infection also triggers a deep remodeling of the host systemic metabolism reaching a new homeostasis and affecting the organs beyond the worm location. Understanding the metabolic alternation in chronic opisthorchiasis, could help us to pinpoint pathways that underlie infection opening possibilities for the development of more selective treatment strategies. Here, with this report we apply an integrative, multicompartment metabolomics analysis, using multiple biofluids, stool samples and tissue extracts to describe metabolic changes in Opisthorchis felineus infected animals at the chronic stage. We show that the shift in lipid metabolism in the serum, a depletion of the amino acids pool, an alteration of the ketogenic pathways in the jejunum and a suppressed metabolic activity of the spleen are the key features of the metabolic host adaptation at the chronic stage of O. felineus infection. We describe this combination of the metabolic changes as a "metabolically mediated immunosuppressive status of organism" which develops during a chronic infection. This status in combination with other factors (e.g., parasite-derived immunomodulators) might increase risk of infection-related malignancy.
We present a pilot study utilizing Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) to analyze bile acids (BA) and fatty acids (FA) in the duodenal content of patients diagnosed with chronic Opisthorchiasis. By using LC-MS analysis, our study aims to shed light on the alterations in bile acids and fatty acids in the duodenal content, providing insights into the metabolic disruptions caused by chronic opisthorchiasis. Our correlation analysis demonstrated a clear re-wiring of the BA-FA balance. Notably, the key “hubs” in the fatty acid data, such as nervonic, arachidic, stearic, and linoleic acids, are present in both groups. Our findings highlight the importance of exploring the correlation relationships between metabolic compounds to understand the underlying disruptions in metabolic homeostasis in chronic opisthorchiasis.
In recent years, the new direction such as identification of informative circulating markers reflecting molecular genetic changes in the DNA of tumor cells was actively developed. Smoking-related DNA adducts are very promising research area, since they indicate high pathogenetic importance in the lung carcinogenesis and can be identified in biological samples with high accuracy and reliability using highly sensitive mass spectrometry methods (TOF/TOF, TOF/MS, MS/MS). The appearance of DNA adducts in blood or tissues is the result of the interaction of carcinogenic factors, such as tobacco constituents, and the body reaction which is determined by individual characteristics of metabolic and repair systems. So, DNA adducts may be considered as a cumulative mirror of heterogeneous response of different individuals to smoking carcinogens, which finally could determine the risk for lung cancer. This review is devoted to analysis of the role of DNA adducts in lung carcinogenesis in order to demonstrate their usefulness as cancer associated markers. Currently, there are some serious limitations impeding the widespread use of DNA adducts as cancer biomarkers, due to failure of standardization of mass spectrometry analysis in order to correctly measure the adduct level in each individual. However, it is known that all DNA adducts are immunogenic, their accumulation over some threshold concentration leads to the appearance of long-living autoantibodies. Thus, detection of an informative pattern of autoantibodies against DNA adducts using innovative multiplex ELISA immunoassay may be a promising approach to find lung cancer at an early stage in high-risk groups (smokers, manufacturing workers, urban dwellers).
Background Opisthorchiasis is a hepatobiliary disease caused by flukes of the trematode family Opisthorchiidae. Opisthorchiasis can lead to severe hepatobiliary morbidity and is classified as a carcinogenic agent. Here we investigate the time-resolved metabolic response to Opisthorchis felineus infection in an animal model. Methodology Thirty golden hamsters were divided in three groups: severe infection (50 metacercariae/hamster), mild infection (15 metacercariae/hamster) and uninfected (vehicle-PBS) groups. Each group consisted of equal number of male and female animals. Plasma samples were collected one day before the infection and then every two weeks up to week 22 after infection. The samples were subjected to 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and multivariate statistical modelling. Principal findings The time-resolved study of the metabolic response to Opisthorchis infection in plasma in the main lines agrees with our previous report on urine data. The response reaches its peak around the 4th week of infection and stabilizes after the 10th week. Yet, unlike the urinary data there is no strong effect of the gender in the data and the intensity of infection is presented in the first two principal components of the PCA model. The main trends of the metabolic response to the infection in blood plasma are the transient depletion of essential amino acids and an increase in lipoprotein and cholesterol concentrations. Conclusions The time resolved metabolic signature of Opisthorchis infection in the hamster's plasma shows a coherent shift in amino acids and lipid metabolism. Our work provides insight into the metabolic basis of the host response on the helminth infection.
Lung cancer (both small cell and non-small cell) is the second most common cancer in both men and women. The article represents results of evaluating of the plasma metabolic profiles of 100 lung cancer patients and 100 controls to investigate significant metabolites using 400 MHz 1H NMR spectrometer. The results of multivariate statistical analysis show that a medium-field NMR spectrometer can obtain the data which are already sufficient for clinical metabolomics.
Background Opisthorchiasis is a parasitic infection caused by the liver flukes of the Opisthorchiidae family. Both experimental and epidemiological data strongly support a role of these parasites in the etiology of the hepatobiliary pathologies and an increased risk of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. Understanding a functional link between the infection and hepatobiliary pathologies requires a detailed description a host-parasite interaction on different levels of biological regulation including the metabolic response on the infection. The last one, however, remains practically undocumented. Here we are describing a host response on Opisthorchiidae infection using a metabolomics approach and present the first exploratory metabolomics study of an experimental model of O. felineus infection. Methodology and Principal findings We conducted a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) based longitudinal metabolomics study involving a cohort of 30 animals with two degrees of infection and a control group. An exploratory analysis shows that the most noticeable trend (30% of total variance) in the data was related to the gender differences. Therefore further analysis was done of each gender group separately applying a multivariate extension of the ANOVA—ASCA (ANOVA simultaneous component analysis). We show that in the males the infection specific time trends are present in the main component (43.5% variance), while in the females it is presented only in the second component and covers 24% of the variance. We have selected and annotated 24 metabolites associated with the observed effects and provided a physiological interpretation of the findings. Conclusions The first exploratory metabolomics study an experimental model of O. felineus infection is presented. Our data show that at early stage of infection a response of an organism unfolds in a gender specific manner. Also main physiological mechanisms affected appear rather nonspecific (a status of the metabolic stress) the data provides a set of the hypothesis for a search of the more specific metabolic markers of the Opisthorchiidae infection.
Identification of DNA-based biomarkers of cancer cells is highly promising and rapidly developing direction that can advance early detection and therapy of malignancies. DNA adducts are felicitous markers of cancer, because their chemical structure is significantly different from that of mutated or methylated DNA, that allows to determine them with high precision using mass spectrometry. The aim of this work is to develop the methodology of sample preparation and its mass spectrometric analysis. Samples were prepared from the blood plasma and from the tumor tissue from lung cancer patients and from blood of healthy individuals. DNA was isolated from the blood plasma and tissue by using column method (BioSilica, Russia) The final yield from 1 ml of blood was 100 ng. DNA samples were subjected to acid hydrolysis (1 M HCl) at 70 °C. After 3 h, the hydrolysis was stopped by cooling on ice for 5 min and later on adding an equivalent amount of an alkali and a phosphate buffer solution (pH 7). To assess the extent of hydrolysis of the samples they were analysed by electrophoresis on a 1.2% agarose gel in Tris-acetate buffer. The samples were extracted at cartridge HF Bond Elut-C18 100 mg, 1 ml (Agilent Technologies, USA) and eluted in several fractions with a gradual increase of methanol in the eluent. Stream of nitrogen was applied to dry the extract. The samples were subjected to mass spectrometric analysis after pre-separation by UHLC Ultimate 3000 RS (Dionex, USA) in a column Dionex Acclaim RSLC 120 C18 (2.1 × 50 mm 120 A, 0.2 μm) flow rate of 0.5 ml/min using as eluents 0.1% solution of formic acid in water (A) and 0.1% solution of formic acid in atsetontrile (B). Elution was carried out in gradient mode: (%B): 0–3min (5%), 3–28min (5–95%), 28–30 min (95%), 30–31 min (95–5%), 31–35 min (5%). Mass spectrometry was carried out on ESI-qTOF ultrahigh resolution Maxis 4G (Bruker, Germany) in the positive ion detection mode range 50–1000 m/z, 2 Hz with the following settings electrospray ion source: CV 3800 V, Nebulizer gas 1 bar, Dry Gas 8 l/min, Dry Temp: 200 °C. It was found that the DNA which was cleaved with acid hydrolysis in the result contained single DNA bases. The samples were stable at 4 °C for at least 7 days. The optimal eluent for solid phase extraction of DNA is 80% solution of methanol in water. The number of DNA adducts was evaluated by the integrated value of the mass spectrometric response detector. It was shown that most amount of adducts 4-hydroxy-1-(3-pyridyl)-1- butanone and N3-(2-carbamoyl-2-hydroxyethyl)adenine was found in DNA samples derived from tumor tissue. The adduct N7-(2-carbamoyl-2-hydroxyethyl)guanine was found in tumor tissue samples and DNA derived from plasma, as well as in all samples of healthy tissue. The established protocol of DNA sample preparation followed by analysis using a mass spectrometer high resolution allows to detect the content of the DNA adducts in small DNA probes (100 ng). We found, that acid hydrolysis is cheaper and more practical in comparison to enzymatic digestion in order to generated samples containing single DNA bases without damaging the structure of adducts. This research was supported by Federal Targeted Programme for Research and Development in Priority Areas of Development of the Russian Scientific and Technological Complex for 2014–2020, “Development of molecular signatures for early detection of lung cancer” (No. 14.575.21.0064 from 05.08.2014, RFMEFI57514X0064) and supported by Tomsk State University, Competitiveness Improvement Program”. Work was conducted with the application of the Tomsk regional common use center technical equipment acquired thanks to a grant of the Russian Ministry of the Agreement No.14.594.21.0001 (RFMEFI59414X0001).
In this paper we have presented the development of a new approach to screening a carcinogen associated DNA adducts. As starting-material circulating DNA from blood of patients with a diagnosis of lung cancer was used. To obtain DNA adducts DNA of 100 patients and 100 healthy volunteers was hydrolyzed with 0.1 M hydrochloric acid under heating and then neutralized. The LC-MS analysis was performed on a UPLC- ESI-q-TOF mass spectrometry system with using C-18 column. Mass spectra were recorded in positive mode with 50–1000 m/z range. Simultaneously 7 DNA adducts were identified by using the approach described in this article.
Opisthorchiasis is a form of foodborne trematodiasis which is caused by liver flukes. It has been shown that a chronic Opisthorchiasis infection increases a risk of cholagiocarcinoma of liver. It is commonly believed that a gradual change of homeostasis in a parasite microenvironment (bile) leads to liver fluke-induced cancer. Nevertheless, no systematic, analytically driven studies confirming this hypothesis have been published yet. The restricted access to clinical material and extreme complexity of the biological matrix (bile) both are the important “rate limiting factors” for a progress in the field. Here we present for the first time a cross-platform mass spectrometric analysis of bile juice collected from the patients with cholangiocarcinoma-associated diseases. We show that an effective analysis of such complex biological matrix as bile juice requires a combination of orthogonal analytical platforms (e.g. RPLC–MS and HILIC–MS) maximizing coverage of the metabolic space. 28 patients with O. felineus infection and 30 negative controls were included in the study. The infection status was confirmed using microscopy analysis of the bile. Bile samples were collected from the gallbladder using sterile puncture, directly frozen and stored at −80 °C until analysis. The samples were randomized and organized into the acquisition blocks consisting of the samples and quality controls (QC). Experiments were carried out with a Dionex Ultimate 3000 LC system (Thermo Scientific/Dionex, The Netherlands) equipped with a Dual Gradient Separation pump allowing for parallel LC analysis, and hyphenated to an Impact UHR-qTOF mass analyzer (Bruker Daltonics, Germany). Reversed-phase experiments (RPLC) were performed with an UHPLC BEH Shield RP18 column 100 × 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm (Waters) and HILIC experiments with a Luna HILIC column (Phenomenex, The Netherlands) of 100 × 2.00 mm, 3 μ m. RPLC data were acquired in ESI positive mode and HILIC in negative mode, respectively. The data acquisition rate was set to 1 Hz over a mass range of m/z 50–1000. The LC–MS data files were aligned by using the in-house developed alignment algorithm MS-Align 2 tool (www.ms-utils.org/msalign2). After the data prepressing, which includes alignment, noise filtering and peak picking two data matrixes costing of 412 features (metabolites) for RPLC and 428 ones for HILIC were generated. To evaluate a degree of similarity between the two data matrixes the RV coefficient (a multivariate extension of correlation coefficient) was used. The coefficient has flattened at 0.58 showing that despite a strong overlap between the datasets there is a substantial number of the “platform specific” metabolites. Those structures will certainly be missed if a single platform strategy is applied. Here we present for the first time a cross-platform mass spectrometric analysis of bile juice collected from the patients cholangiocarcinoma-associated diseases. We show that a combination of the two platforms greatly improves the coverage of the metabolome and as such should be a firstchoice for exploratory studies of the complex biological matrixes. Work was conducted with the application of the Tomsk regional common use center technical equipment acquired thanks to a grant of the Russian Ministry of the Agreement No. 14.594.21.0001 (RFMEFI59414X0001). This project is supported by “The Tomsk State University Academic D.I. Mendeleev Fund Program” under Grant (No. 18.1.52.2015).
