PLoS ONE (Nov 2009)

A novel lipidomic strategy reveals plasma phospholipid signatures associated with respiratory disease severity in cystic fibrosis patients.

  • Ida Chiara Guerrera,
  • Giuseppe Astarita,
  • Jean-Philippe Jais,
  • Dorota Sands,
  • Anna Nowakowska,
  • Julien Colas,
  • Isabelle Sermet-Gaudelus,
  • Martin Schuerenberg,
  • Daniele Piomelli,
  • Aleksander Edelman,
  • Mario Ollero

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007735
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 11
p. e7735

Abstract

Read online

The aim of this study was to search for lipid signatures in blood plasma from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients using a novel MALDI-TOF-ClinProTools strategy, initially developed for protein analysis, and thin layer chromatography coupled to MALDI-TOF (TLC-MALDI). Samples from 33 CF patients and 18 healthy children were subjected to organic extraction and column chromatography separation of lipid classes. Extracts were analyzed by MALDI-TOF, ion signatures were compared by the ClinProTools software and by parallel statistical analyses. Relevant peaks were identified by LC-MSn. The ensemble of analyses provided 11 and 4 peaks differentially displayed in CF vs healthy and in mild vs severe patients respectively. Ten ions were significantly decreased in all patients, corresponding to 4 lysophosphatidylcholine (18:0, 18:2, 20:3, and 20:5) and 6 phosphatidylcholine (36:5, O-38:0, 38:4, 38:5, 38:6, and P-40:1) species. One sphingolipid, SM(d18:0), was significantly increased in all patients. Four PC forms (36:3, 36:5, 38:5, and 38:6) were consistently downregulated in severe vs mild patients. These observations were confirmed by TLC-MALDI. These results suggest that plasma phospholipid signatures may be able to discriminate mild and severe forms of CF, and show for the first time MALDI-TOF-ClinProTools as a suitable methodology for the search of lipid markers in CF.