Untargeted metabolomics of serum samples during COVID-19 disease progression

了解一个表面健康的人的生物化学变化，包括当他们可能没有明显的SARS-Cov2感染症状时，仍然是一个巨大的挑战。类似的问题也适用于了解谁可能（在没有帮助或通过干预的情况下）活下来，谁一旦确诊将死于COVID-19，答案同样未知。由于我们目前还没有任何知识（尽管我们知道心血管的变化应该很容易测量代谢后果）郑云云，马玉涛，张建勇，谢鑫：COVID-19和心血管系统。Nat Rev Cardiol 2020)，最好的方法是测量一切并找出答案。这种方法被称为“非靶向代谢组学”。我们是这方面的专家（凯尔共同发明了“代谢组”一词），并且已经发现了衡量心血管压力的新方法。我们现在希望将这些应用于已经在利物浦收集的血清样本队列，这些样本将提供给我们（在去除所有蛋白质（包括病毒）后）。我们预计，我们将能够找到可能是COVID-19感染和预后的早期预测指标的标志物。

Understanding changes in the biochemistry of an individual who is ostensibly healthy, including when they may show no overt symptoms of infection with SARS-Cov2, remains a huge challenge. Similar questions apply to understanding who is likely to live (unaided or via intervention) and who will die from COVID-19 once diagnosed, and the answers are equally unknown. Since we do not presently have any knowledge (although we know that there are cardiovascular changes that should have easily measured metabolic consequences (Zheng YY, Ma YT, Zhang JY, Xie X: COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system. Nat Rev Cardiol 2020), the best approach is to measure everything and find out.This approach is known as 'untargeted metabolomics'. We are experts in it (Kell co-invented the term 'metabolome'), and have already discovered novel measures of cardiovascular stress. We now wish to apply these to cohorts of serum samples that are already being collected in Liverpool and which will be made available to us (after treatment to remove all proteins, including virus). We anticipate that we shall be able to find markers that could be very early predictors of COVID-19 infection and prognosis.