Funding tool: Basic research projects
Project-ID: LS14-021
Project start: 01. Februar 2016
Project end: will follow
Runtime: 36 months / finished
Funding amount: € 302.430,00

Brief summary:

Abdominal obesity together with insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia and hypertension are hallmarks of the metabolic syndrome (MeS). Furthermore, this disease is also characterized by a low-grade-inflammatory status of adipose tissue causing changes in lipid metabolism of adipocytes by misbalancing uptake, deposition and release of lipids and free fatty acids (FFAs). Intriguingly, markers for abnormal lipid metabolism and inflammation are also found to be elevated in patients suffering from cancer cachexia (CaC). We suppose that pathological alterations of the lipid metabolism are main contributors in MeS and CaC. Therefore, we hypothesize that metabolic signatures comprising lipid, eicosanoid and cytokine patterns are potent to reflect different disease states, disease progression and to monitor the impact of interventions.
In this study, a comprehensive metabolic profiling approach (lipid and protein-based) will be applied to characterize the plasma-lipid signature, eicosanoid and cytokine patterns of patients suffering from MeS and CaC. This will be accomplished by the identification and quantification of absolute and relative amounts of different lipid class-species, free fatty acids, inflammatory eicosanoids and cytokines in the plasma. The ambitious goal of the project is to provide metabolic signatures indicative for the onset of the diseases investigated or for the identification of patients at risk and as measure for the evaluation of therapeutic or nutritional intervention efficacy.

Keywords:
Internal Medicine, Mass Spectrometry, Metabolomics,