Untargeted metabolomics of serum samples during COVID-19 disease progression

了解表面上健康的个体的生物化学变化，包括当他们可能没有明显的SARS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活下来（没有帮助或通过干预），以及谁将在确诊后死于COVID-19，答案同样是未知的。由于我们目前没有任何知识（尽管我们知道有心血管变化，应该很容易测量代谢后果）（Zheng YY，Ma YT，Zhang JY，Xie X：COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system. 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（Kell共同发明了“代谢组”一词），并且已经发现了心血管压力的新措施。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，并将提供给我们（在处理以去除所有蛋白质，包括病毒后）。我们预计，我们将能够找到可能成为COVID-19感染和预后的早期预测因子的标志物。

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.