Metabolic profiling of CD19+ cells in chronic lymphocytic leukemia by single-cell mass spectrometry imaging

Modern mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) enables single cells' metabolism exploration. Aims of this study were development of the single-cell MSI of human CD19+ lymphocytes and metabolic profiling of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Blood donor (BD) samples were used for the optimization of CD19+ lymphocyte isolation and single-cell matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI TOF) MSI. Independent set of 200 CD19+ lymphocytes coming from 5 CLL patients and 5 BD was used for the CD19+ lymphocytes classification assessment and the untargeted metabolic profiling. CLL vs BD lymphocyte classification was performed using partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) using normalized single-cell mass spectra recorded in 300-600 and 600-950 Da ranges was applied.

Accuracy assessed by 10-fold cross-validation of CD19+ lymphocyte PLS-DA classification reached >90.0 %. Volcano plots showed 106 significantly altered m/z signals in CLL of which 9 were tentatively annotated. Among tentatively annotated m/z signals formaldehyde and glutathione metabolites and tetrahydrofolate stand out.

A method for single-cell MALDI TOF MSI of CD19+ lymphocytes was successfully developed. The method confirmed the significance of oxidative stress and single-carbon metabolism, pyruvate and fatty acid metabolism and apoptosis in CLL and it provided metabolic candidates for diagnostic applications.