87. Low Field, Benchtop NMR Spectroscopy as a Potential Tool for Point-of-Care Diagnostics of Metabolic Conditions: Validation and Protocols

Benita Percival, Yasan Osman, Martin Grootveld, Miles Gibson, Marco Molinari, Fereshteh Jafari, Mark Martin, Federico Casanova, Melissa Mather, Mark Edgar, Philippe Wilson, Preprints, (2018) DOI: 10.20944/preprints201810.0089.v1

Novel sensing technologies for liquid biopsies offer a promising prospect for the early detection of metabolic conditions through -omics techniques. Indeed, high-field NMR facilities are routinely used for metabolomics investigations on a range of biofluids in order to rapidly recognize unusual metabolic patterns in patients suffering from a range of diseases. However, these techniques are restricted by the prohibitively large size and cost of such facilities, suggesting a possible role for smaller, low-field NMR instruments in biofluid analysis. Herein we describe selected biomolecule validation on a low-field benchtop NMR spectrometer (60 MHz), and present an associated protocol for the analysis of biofluids on compact NMR instruments. We successfully detect common markers of diabetic control at low-to-medium concentrations through optimized experiments, including glucose (≤ 2.6 mmol./L) and acetone (25 μmol./L), and additionally in readily-accessible biofluids. We present a combined protocol for the analysis of these biofluids with low-field NMR spectrometers for metabolomics, and offer a perspective on the future of this technique appealing to point-of-care applications.