Detection of urinary metabolites of metabolic pathway disorders by using VTGE and LC-HRMS techniques

Background: In recent, various human health disorders including cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases are noticed among human populations. Currently, genetic and proteomic approaches are highly reported to detect metabolic disorders that also include inborn error of metabolisms. These existing detection methods are faced with cost issue and time consuming factors. Therefore, metabolites as biomarkers are one of potential avenues to detect metabolic disorders. Further, exploitation of urine as potential source of metabolite biomarkers, there are limitation in this area of research due to abundance of non-metabolite components such as proteins and nucleic acids. Hence, methods and processes are required to precisely fractionate metabolites from urine of inborn error of metabolism patients and then identified by analytical tools such as LC-HRMS and GC-MS. Methods: Sterile filtered urine samples (750 microl) mixed with (250 microl) loading buffer were electrophoresed on VTGE that uses acrylamide gel (acrylamide:bisacrylamide, 30:1) as matrix of 15%. Further, vertical tube gel electrophoresis (VTGE) technique combined with LC-HR-MS to identify metabolites that are known as the biomarkers of metabolic disorders was carried out. Results and Discussion: The authors provide evidence on the use of novel VTGE coupled with LC-HRMS to detect metabolites among metabolic disorders. Data suggest the applicability of VTGE coupled with LC-HRMS technique to detect metabolites such as 2-methyluridine, 2-Methylglutaric acid, 2-Methyl citric acid, 2-Hydroxyglutaric acid in case of metabolic disorders. Conclusion: This preliminary work is suggested to be extended to large clinical samples to validate application of this method to detect metabolic disorders including inborn error of metabolisms.