How Is Mass Spectrometry Tackling the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Abstract

Most of us have never faced a pandemic before. The World Health Organization declared the 2019 novel coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 virus), a pandemic by March 11th, 2020. Today, this illness has reported more than 5′331,019 fatalities worldwide (December 17th, 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic has posed an unprecedented global challenge and put the academic community on “the spot.” The following mini-review reports how the MS community improved the understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus pathophysiology while developing diagnostic procedures to complement the PCR-based approaches. For example, MS researchers identified the interaction sites between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and their hosts; this new knowledge is critical for developing antiviral drugs. MS researchers also realized that COVID-19 should be considered a systemic disease and not just a respiratory illness since its metabolic, lipidomic, and proteomic profile reflects four different clinical disorders: 1) acute inflammatory response, 2) a cardiovascular disease, 3) a prediabetic/diabetes and 4) liver dysfunction. Furthermore, MS researchers put forth the knowledge that the metabolic and lipidomic profile of several patients remained altered after being discharged, thus hinting at the scientific basis for the long COVID syndrome.

A Case Report of a COVID-19 Infection with Positive Sputum and Negative Nasopharyngeal Rapid Antigen-Based Testing: A Practical Method to Explore Sputome

“…Advancements in finding effective therapies and vaccines should also be hand-in-hand with new and error-free diagnostic assessment. Although point-of-care tests are the most desirable alternative to ramp up large-scale population screening, analytical separation technologies coupled to selective affinity-capture methods and powerful detectors, such as laser-induced fluorescence and mass spectrometry are becoming vital tools for isolation, separation, identification, and structural characterization of molecular viral and other pathogens entities [9,[67][68][69][70][71][72][73]. Infectious diseases do not respect international boundaries.…”

Diagnosis of Viral Infections: A Review of the Current Assays and the Prediction of the Future

“…They detect the type, amount, structure, and chemical composition of the compound (Broad Institute, 2021). Although mass spectrometry is less sensitive in diagnosing COVID-19 compared to PCR and some of the other methods, it can identify the metabolomic, lipidomic, and proteomic profiles that are related to the diseases' profiles (Ibáñez, 2022). However, the original purpose of this technology was not to replace DNA or RNA sequencing, but rather to provide an alternative to diagnosing the virus and its mutants with the proteins they produce (Lewis et al, 1998).…”

Diagnosis of Viral Infections: A Review of the Current Assays and the Prediction of the Future

“…They detect the type, amount, structure, and chemical composition of the compound [21]. Although mass spectrometry is less sensitive in diagnosing COVID-19 compared to PCR and some of the other methods, it can identify the metabolomic, lipidomic, and proteomic profiles that are related to the diseases' profiles [22]. However, the original purpose of this technology was not to replace DNA or RNA sequencing, but rather to provide an alternative to diagnosing the virus and its mutants with the proteins they produce [23].…”