Monitoring of post-mortem changes of saliva N-glycosylation by nano LC/MS.

The estimation of post-mortem interval (PMI) is a crucial part for investigations of crime and untimely deaths in forensic science. However, standard methods of PMI estimation are easily confounded by extenuating circumstances and/or environmental factors. Therefore, a panel of PMI markers obtained from a more acceptable and accurate method is necessary to definitely determine time of death. Saliva, one of the vital fluids encountered at crime scenes, contains various glycoproteins that are highly affected by biochemical environment. Here, we investigated saliva N-glycans between live and dead rats to determine the alteration of N-glycans using an animal model system because of the limitation of saliva collection from recently deceased humans. Rat saliva samples were collected both before and after death. N-Glycans were enzymatically released by PNGase F without any glycoprotein extraction. Released native glycans were purified and enriched by PGC-SPE. About 100 N-glycans were identified, profiled, and structurally elucidated by nano LC/MS and tandem MS. Sialylated N-glycans were exclusively present in abundance in live rat saliva whereas non-sialylated N-glycans including LacdiNAc disaccharides were detected in high level following death. Through in-depth investigations using quantitative comparison and statistical analysis, 14 N-glycans that significantly changed after death were identified as the potential marker candidates for PMI estimation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to monitor the post-mortem changes of saliva glycosylation, with obvious forensic applications.

Direct analysis of aberrant glycosylation on haptoglobin in patients with gastric cancer.

Based on our previous studies, differential analysis of N-glycan expression bound on serum haptoglobin reveals the quantitative variation on gastric cancer patients. In this prospective case-control study, we explore the clinically relevant glycan markers for gastric cancer diagnosis. Serum samples were collected from patients with gastric cancer (n = 44) and healthy control (n = 44). N-glycans alteration was monitored by intact analysis of Hp using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry followed by immunoaffinity purification with the serum samples. Intensity and frequency markers were defined depending on the mass spectrometry data analysis. Multiple markers were found with high diagnostic efficacy. As intensity markers (I-marker), six markers were discovered with the AUC > 0.8. The high efficiency markers exhibited AUC of 0.93 with a specificity of 86% when the sensitivity was set to 95%. We additionally established frequency marker (f-marker) panels based on the tendency of high N-glycan expression. The AUC to conclude patients and control group were 0.82 and 0.79, respectively. This study suggested that N-glycan variation of serum haptoglobin were associated with patients with gastric cancer and might be a promising marker for the cancer screening.

Determination of glyphosate and its metabolite in emergency room in Korea.

The number of glyphosate intoxication cases has been increased after the regulation of paraquat. Unfortunately, there are no reports on the potential concentration of glyphosate for those acute intoxicated patients admitted to emergency rooms and the correlation between the concentration of glyphosate and clinical symptoms in Korea up to our knowledge. As a nonselective herbicide, analysis of glyphosate requires derivatization because of its amphoteric and strongly polar nature. In order to develop a method to determine the concentration of glyphosate and its metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) in blood samples without derivatization, liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was utilized with a hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) column. The validation of this method showed that the limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantitation (LOQs) for glyphosate and AMPA were 50 and 100ng/mL, respectively. In addition, matrix effect, recovery rate, and accuracy and precision in intra and inter-day were evaluated during the validation study of this method. Blood samples acquired from five glyphosate intoxicated patients were analyzed to investigate the correlation between the concentration of glyphosate and clinical symptoms. These patients were previously admitted to the emergency room at a University Hospital in Korea after glyphosate was self-administered in suicide attempts or by accident. As results of blood sample study, the concentration of glyphosate and AMPA were found in the range of 1.0-171.1 and 0.2-2.6µg/mL, respectively. The concentration ratio of glyphosate to AMPA was 55-71. According to the clinical reports for those patients, they were in the age between 47 and 82 years old and administered about 50-400mL. The blood samples were collected within 2-5h after administration of glyphosate. Among the intoxicated patients, the most common clinical symptom was metabolic acidosis, identified in four patients. The comparison between the concentration of glyphosate and administered dosage did not show the correlation, which suggests further investigation on the effects of surfactants in glyphosate from different vendors.