Evaluation of the Volatile Organic Compounds Released from Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells and THP1 Cells Under Normal and Proinflammatory Conditions

Leukemia is a group of cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow and result in high numbers of abnormal and dysfunctional white blood cells. Many studies were carried out to investigate metabolism of these cells. Metabolome analysis has been successfully applied to leukemia disease and emerged as a powerful tool for obtaining information about the biological processes that occur in organisms, and as a useful platform for discovering new clinical biomarkers and make diagnosis of disease using different biofluids. Whatever has not been investigated in leukemic cells is volatile metabolic signature that in recent literature is called "volatilome". Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the headspace of cultured THP1 cells and normal human peripheral blood mononuclear cells, were collected by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and analyzed by gas chromatography combined with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), thus defining a volatile metabolomics signature. Styrene, cyclohexanol, cyclohexanone, 1-hexanol-2-ethyl, cyclohexane, 1,1'-(1,2-dimethyl-1,2-ethanediyl) bis-, benzene, 1,3-bis(1,1-dimethylethyl)-were present in higher amount in cultured THP1 cell than in PBMC, while 2-butanone has an opposite trend. Cell stimulation with lipopolysaccharide affected normal cells, but not leukemic cells. The establishment of the volatile fingerprint of THP1 cell lines presents a powerful approach to find endogenous VOCs that could be used to improve the diagnostic tools and explore the associated metabolomic pathways.