Development of an optimized method for processing peripheral blood mononuclear cells for 1H-nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabolomic profiling

NMR-Based Mitochondria Metabolomic Profiling: A New Approach To Reveal Cancer-Associated Alterations

Studying metabolism may assist in understanding the relationship between normal and dysfunctional mitochondrial activity and various diseases, such as neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, autoimmune, psychiatric, and cancer. Nuclear magnetic resonance-based metabolomics represents a powerful method to characterize the chemical content of complex samples and has been successfully applied to studying a range of conditions. However, an optimized methodology is lacking for analyzing isolated organelles, such as mitochondria. In this study, we report the development of a protocol to metabolically profile mitochondria from healthy, tumoral, and metastatic tissues. Encouragingly, this approach provided quantitative information about up to 45 metabolites in one comprehensive and robust analysis. Our results revealed significant differences between whole-cell and mitochondrial metabolites, which supports a more refined approach to metabolic analysis. We applied our optimized methodology to investigate aggressive and metastatic breast cancer in mouse tissues, discovering that lung mitochondria exhibit an altered metabolic fingerprint. Specific amino acids, organic acids, and lipids showed significant increases in levels when compared with mitochondria from healthy tissues. Our optimized methodology could promote a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying breast cancer aggressiveness and mitochondrial-related diseases and support the optimization of new advanced therapies.

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.

Methodological Developments for Metabolic NMR Spectroscopy from Cultured Cells to Tissue Extracts: Achievements, Progress and Pitfalls

This is a broad overview and critical review of a particular group of closely related ex vivo and in vitro metabolic NMR spectroscopic methods. The scope of interest comprises studies of cultured cells and excised tissue, either intact or after physicochemical extraction of metabolites. Our detailed discussion includes pitfalls that have led to erroneous statements in the published literature, some of which may cause serious problems in metabolic and biological interpretation of results. To cover a wide range of work from relevant research areas, we consider not only the most recent achievements in the field, but also techniques that proved to be valid and successful in the past, although they may not have generated a very significant number of papers more recently. Thus, this comparative review also aims at providing background information useful for judiciously choosing between the metabolic ex vivo/in vitro NMR methods presented. Finally, the methods of interest are discussed in the context of, and in relation to, other metabolic analysis protocols such as HR-MAS and cell perfusion NMR, as well as the mass spectrometry approach.