Metabolic changes of endothelial cells in post-burn patients using UHPLC-MS/MS

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Monitoring metabolic biomarkers could be used as an effective tool for post-burn patient diagnosis and repair. OBJECTIVE. Endothelial cells play an important role in repair after burns. However, little research has been done on this. We aim to discover predictive biological endothelial cell markers and study biomarker-related metabolism. METHODS After establishing a thermal injury model using endothelial cells. We examined the metabolic changes 48 and 72 h after burn using liquid-phase mass spectrometry and endothelial cell models derived from heat treatment. RESULTS A total of 365 metabolites in 12 samples were analyzed using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. Among these, univariate analysis after the false discovery correction showed eight concentrations in each time period changed significantly with time (P ＜0.05). The 48-h post-burn was characterized by a decreasing trend in the levels of six metabolites including deoxycholate, glucose 1-phosphate, glucose 6-phosphate, mannose 6-phosphate, histidine, and 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, and Metabolites with significantly increased levels were Sambucinol, Flufenacet. The levels of metabolites such as azelate, 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, guanosine monophosphate, xanthosine monophosphate, cytidine, and flufenacet decreased significantly, while the level of dibutyl phthalate showed an increasing trend after 72 h. Metabolic pathways such as Starch and sucrose metabolism and purine metabolism are greatly affected. CONCLUSION Our study shows that metabolomic signatures of heat-injured endothelial cells were found to correlate with their burn time, suggesting that metabolomics may have the potential to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for burns.