Distinct Bone Marrow Metabolic Profiles at Relapse Compared with Initial Diagnosis in Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia—An LC-MS Metabolomics Study
TL;DR
Bone marrow taken from children at the time of an acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) relapse differs in its metabolite composition from bone marrow taken from other children at initial diagnosis, which suggests how relapsed disease may be sustained.
Abstract
Simple Summary Bone marrow taken from children at the time of an acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) relapse differs in its metabolite composition from bone marrow taken from other children at initial diagnosis. The differences involve fatty acid, amino acid and lipid metabolites and suggest how relapsed disease may be sustained, although this study measured the abundance of metabolites and cannot establish the activity of the pathways that produce them. These exploratory findings identify metabolic nodes that merit investigation in future work; the study does not show that any of them is a target for treatment. Marrow is rarely collected and stored at the moment a child relapses, so this comparison has not been made before. The bone marrow of the relapsed children was sampled at the time of relapse and that of the non-relapsed children at diagnosis, so this work describes the metabolism of relapsed disease rather than a test that could predict relapse in advance.
