An integrated genomic and metabolomic approach for defining survival time in adult oligodendrogliomas patients

High-resolution magic angle spinning NMR for intact biological specimen analysis: Initial discovery, recent developments, and future directions

High-resolution magic angle spinning (HRMAS) NMR, an approach for intact biological material analysis discovered more than 25 years ago, has been advanced by many technical developments and applied to many biomedical uses. This article provides a history of its discovery, first by explaining the key scientific advances that paved the way for HRMAS NMR's invention, and then by turning to recent developments that have profited from applying and advancing the technique during the last 5 years. Developments aimed at directly impacting healthcare include HRMAS NMR metabolomics applications within studies of human disease states such as cancers, brain diseases, metabolic diseases, transplantation medicine, and adiposity. Here, the discussion describes recent HRMAS NMR metabolomics studies of breast cancer and prostate cancer, as well as of matching tissues with biofluids, multimodality studies, and mechanistic investigations, all conducted to better understand disease metabolic characteristics for diagnosis, opportune windows for treatment, and prognostication. In addition, HRMAS NMR metabolomics studies of plants, foods, and cell structures, along with longitudinal cell studies, are reviewed and discussed. Finally, inspired by the technique's history of discoveries and recent successes, future biomedical arenas that stand to benefit from HRMAS NMR-initiated scientific investigations are presented.

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.

Metabolomic Impact of Lidocaine on a Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cell Line

Background: Metabolomics and onco-anesthesia are two emerging research fields in oncology. Metabolomics (metabolites analysis) is a new diagnostic and prognostic tool that can also be used for predicting the therapeutic or toxic responses to anticancer treatments. Onco-anesthesia studies assess the impact of anesthesia on disease-free and overall survival after cancer surgery. It has been shown that local anesthetics (LA), particularly lidocaine (LIDO), exert antitumor properties both in vitro and in vivo and may alter the biologic fingerprints of cancer cells. As LA are known to impair mitochondrial bioenergetics and byproducts, the aim of the present study was to assess the impact of LIDO on metabolomic profile of a breast cancer cell line.

Methods: Breast cancer MDA-MB-231 cells were exposed for 4 h to 0.5 mM LIDO or vehicle (n = 4). The metabolomic fingerprint was characterized by high resolution magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy (HRMAS). The multivariate technique using the Algorithm to Determine Expected Metabolite Level Alteration (ADEMA) (Cicek et al., PLoS Comput. Biol., 2013, 9, e1002859), based on mutual information to identify expected metabolite level changes with respect to a specific condition, was used to determine the metabolites variations caused by LIDO.

Results: LIDO modulates cell metabolites levels. Several pathways, including glutaminolysis, choline, phosphocholine and total choline syntheses were significantly downregulated in the LIDO group.

Discussion: This is the first study assessing the impact of LIDO on metabolomic fingerprint of breast cancer cells. Among pathways downregulated by LIDO, many metabolites are reported to be associated with adverse prognosis when present at a high titer in breast cancer patients. These results fit with the antitumor properties of LIDO and suggest its impact on metabolomics profile of cancer cells. These effects of LIDO are of clinical significance because it is widely used for local anesthesia with cutaneous infiltration during percutaneous tumor biopsy. Future in vitro and preclinical studies are necessary to assess whether metabolomics analysis requires modification of local anesthetic techniques during tumor biopsy.

Oncogenic ZEB2/miR-637/HMGA1 signaling axis targeting vimentin promotes the malignant phenotype of glioma

Glioma is the most common primary tumor of the central nervous system. We previously confirmed that zinc finger E-box binding homeobox (ZEB) 2 promotes the malignant progression of glioma, while microRNA-637 (miR-637) is associated with favorable prognosis in glioma. This study aimed to investigate the potential interaction between ZEB2 and miR-637 and its downstream signaling pathway in glioma. The results revealed that ZEB2 could directly bind to the E-box elements in the miR-637 promoter and promote cell proliferation, migration, and invasion via miR-637 downregulation. Subsequent screening confirmed that HMGA1 was a direct target of miR-637, while miR-637 could drive the malignant phenotype of glioma by suppressing HMGA1 both in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, interaction between cytoplasmic HMGA1 and vimentin was observed, and vimentin inhibition could abolish increased migration and invasion induced by HMGA1 overexpression. Both HMGA1 and vimentin were associated with an unfavorable prognosis in glioma. Additionally, upregulated HMGA1 and vimentin were found in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) wild-type and 1p/19q non-codeletion diffusely infiltrating glioma. In conclusion, we identified an oncogenic ZEB2/miR-637/HMGA1 signaling axis targeting vimentin that promotes both migration and invasion in glioma.