Tag Archives: biomarkers

NMR could improve the detection of “date rape” drug GHB

Direct Monitoring of Exogenous γ-Hydroxybutyric Acid in Body Fluids by NMR Spectroscopy” by M. Palomino-Schätzlein, Y. Wang, A. Brailsford, T. Parella, D. Cowan, C. Legido-Quigley, M. Pérez-Trujillo. Anal. Chem., 2017, 89 (16), pp 8343–8350. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.7b01567

γ-Hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) is a popular drug increasingly associated with cases of drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA). Currently, expanding procedures of analysis and having forensic evidence of GHB intake in a long term are mandatory. Up to now, most studies have been performed using GC/MS and LC-MS as analytical platforms, which involve significant manipulation of the sample and, often, indirect measurements. In this work, procedures used in NMR-based metabolomics were applied to a GHB clinical trial on urine and serum. Detection, identification, and briefly quantification of the drug by NMR methods were surveyed, as well as the use of NMR-based metabolomics for the search of potential surrogate biomarkers of GHB consumption. Results demonstrated the suitability of NMR spectroscopy, as a robust nondestructive technique, to fast and directly monitor exogenous GHB in almost intact body fluids and its high potential in the search for metabolites associated with GHB intake. This initial work show some strengths of  NMR spectroscopy and standard methods routinely used in the NMR analysis of biological samples to approach the problem. These features could open up new interesting possibilities in future studies, complementing current procedures.

This work on media:   spectroscopynow.com  phys.org  / sciencedaily.com  /  canadafreepress.com / forensicmag.com  / cbinsights.com

Visiting PhD Student Yaoyao Wang

Blog2Today we are saying goodbye to our dear Yaoyao, though we hope to see her very soon again.

Yaoyao is currently finishing her PhD on metabonomics applied to clinical biomarkers in the Legido-Quigley Lab at King’s College London (KCL).

She has been visiting us for the last two months, during which we have been working together in two metabonomics projects related to drug misuse biomarkers and chiral metabonomics. It has been a great pleasure for us to spend this time with her and continue with this collaboration from now on.

Seminar: Biomarker and metabolomics, a novel approach to detect drug misuse

Yaoyao Wang, visiting PhD student from King’s College London, will be giving a talk on  December the 18th at 10:00 h in the SeRMN. Her talk is entitled “Biomarker and metabolomics: a novel approach to detect drug misuse”.

yaoyao

Yaoyao is from Clinical Biomarkers Lab of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science, King’s College London (KCL). Her PhD project focuses on developing metabolomics approach to identify biomarkers for drug misuse through the analysis of human biofluids samples and the development of data treatment methods, using R (XCMS) and other bioinformatics tools. She has been collaborating intensively with the Drug Control Centre of KCL using LC-MS.

Her talk will include the metabolomics biomarker discovery of low dose salbutamol in urine collected for anti-doping tests and preliminary longitudinal metabolomics study of “date-rape” drug GHB, as well as a glance of the other on-going projects in Clinical Biomarkers Lab.

All interested people are welcome to attend this seminar.

Neurodegeneration in NPC Mice by T2 and DTI MRI

“In Vivo Assessment of Neurodegeneration in Niemann-Pick Type C Mice by Quantitative T2 Mapping and Diffusion Tensor Imaging”, by John W. Totenhagen, Silvia Lope-Piedrafita, Ivan A. Borbon, Eriko S. Yoshimaru, Robert P. Erickson, and Theodore P. Trouard; Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging 35 (2012), 528-536. doi: 10.1002/jmri.22837

NIEMANN-PICK TYPE C (NPC) disease is a rare genetic neurodegenerative disease with no cure and few effective options for treatment. Diagnosis is most often made during childhood with symptoms progressively worsening and leading to death prior to adulthood. Continue reading Neurodegeneration in NPC Mice by T2 and DTI MRI