Owlstone Medical Ltd, Cambridge, UK.
Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.
Metabolomics. 2024 Sep 6;20(5):102. doi: 10.1007/s11306-024-02163-6.
Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can arise from underlying metabolism and are detectable in exhaled breath, therefore offer a promising route to non-invasive diagnostics. Robust, precise, and repeatable breath measurement platforms able to identify VOCs in breath distinguishable from background contaminants are needed for the confident discovery of breath-based biomarkers.
To build a reliable breath collection and analysis method that can produce a comprehensive list of known VOCs in the breath of a heterogeneous human population.
The analysis cohort consisted of 90 pairs of breath and background samples collected from a heterogenous population. Owlstone Medical's Breath Biopsy OMNI platform, consisting of sample collection, TD-GC-MS analysis and feature extraction was utilized. VOCs were determined to be "on-breath" if they met at least one of three pre-defined metrics compared to paired background samples. On-breath VOCs were identified via comparison against purified chemical standards, using retention indexing and high-resolution accurate mass spectral matching.
1471 VOCs were present in > 80% of samples (breath and background), and 585 were on-breath by at least one metric. Of these, 148 have been identified covering a broad range of chemical classes.
A robust breath collection and relative-quantitative analysis method has been developed, producing a list of 148 on-breath VOCs, identified using purified chemical standards in a heterogenous population. Providing confirmed VOC identities that are genuinely breath-borne will facilitate future biomarker discovery and subsequent biomarker validation in clinical studies. Additionally, this list of VOCs can be used to facilitate cross-study data comparisons for improved standardization.
挥发性有机化合物（VOCs）可源于潜在代谢，可在呼气中检测到，因此为非侵入性诊断提供了有前途的途径。需要稳健、精确和可重复的呼吸测量平台，能够识别呼吸中的 VOCs，这些 VOCs与背景污染物区分开来，从而有信心发现基于呼吸的生物标志物。
建立一种可靠的呼吸采集和分析方法，该方法能够生成异质人群呼吸中已知 VOCs 的综合清单。
分析队列由从异质人群中收集的 90 对呼吸和背景样本组成。Owlstone Medical 的 Breath Biopsy OMNI 平台由样品采集、TD-GC-MS 分析和特征提取组成。如果与配对背景样品相比，VOCs 至少满足三个预定义指标中的一个，则将其确定为“呼气中的 VOCs”。通过与纯化化学标准品进行比较，使用保留指数和高分辨率精确质量光谱匹配来识别呼气中的 VOCs。
在>80%的样本（呼吸和背景）中存在 1471 种 VOC，并且至少有一个指标为呼气中的 VOCs 的有 585 种。其中，已经鉴定出 148 种涵盖广泛的化学类别。
已经开发出一种稳健的呼吸采集和相对定量分析方法，该方法在异质人群中使用纯化化学标准品生成了 148 种呼气中的 VOCs 清单。提供真正由呼吸携带的已确认 VOC 身份将有助于未来在临床研究中发现生物标志物并随后对其进行验证。此外，此 VOC 清单可用于促进跨研究数据比较，以提高标准化程度。
