Department of Biochemistry, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, USA.
Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Mass Spectrom Rev. 2024 Jul-Aug;43(4):713-722. doi: 10.1002/mas.21871. Epub 2023 Dec 27.
The analysis of exhaled breath condensate (EBC) demonstrates a promising avenue of minimally invasive biopsies for diagnostics. EBC is obtained by cooling exhaled air and collecting the condensation to be utilized for downstream analysis using various analytical methods. The aqueous phase of breath contains a large variety of miscible small compounds including polar electrolytes, amino acids, cytokines, chemokines, peptides, small proteins, metabolites, nucleic acids, and lipids/eicosanoids-however, these analytes are typically present at minuscule levels in EBC, posing a considerable technical challenge. Along with recent improvements in devices for breath collection, the sensitivity and resolution of liquid chromatography coupled to online mass spectrometry-based proteomics has attained subfemtomole sensitivity, vastly enhancing the quality of EBC sample analysis. As a result, proteomics analysis of EBC has been expanding the field of breath biomarker research. We present an au courant overview of the achievements in proteomics of EBC, the advancement of EBC collection devices, and the current and future applications for EBC biomarker analysis.
呼出气冷凝物（EBC）的分析为诊断学提供了一种有前途的微创活检途径。EBC 通过冷却呼出的空气并收集冷凝物，然后使用各种分析方法对其进行下游分析。呼出气的水相包含大量可混合的小分子化合物，包括极性电解质、氨基酸、细胞因子、趋化因子、肽、小蛋白、代谢物、核酸和脂质/类二十烷酸——然而，这些分析物在 EBC 中的含量通常非常低，这是一个相当大的技术挑战。随着用于呼气收集的设备的最新改进，基于液相色谱与在线质谱联用的蛋白质组学的灵敏度和分辨率已达到亚飞摩尔灵敏度，极大地提高了 EBC 样本分析的质量。因此，EBC 的蛋白质组学分析扩展了呼吸生物标志物研究领域。我们介绍了 EBC 蛋白质组学的最新进展、EBC 收集设备的进步以及 EBC 生物标志物分析的当前和未来应用。
