Proteomic Analysis of Whole Blood Using Volumetric Absorptive Microsampling for Precision Medicine Biomarker Studies
Molloy et al.
The finding, in our words
The study showed that a VAMS device can collect dried whole blood for shotgun LC-MS proteomic analysis, detecting and quantifying up to 1600 proteins from a single run with greater proteome depth than conventional undepleted plasma analysis. It also demonstrated that archived blood cell pellets stored frozen for over five years remain compatible with VAMS, supporting its use for biomarker discovery from biobank repositories.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
Researchers successfully validated an analytical method for measuring creatinine across plasma and volumetric absorptive microsampling devices, demonstrating strong correlation between conventional plasma and dried microsamples. This provides a reliable, patient-centric approach for monitoring kidney function remotely during transplant follow-up.
An optimised VAMS workflow for blood proteomics increased protein identifications 4-fold in plasma and 2.1-fold in whole blood compared with liquid processing, with mean CVs below 11%, and whole blood showed greater robustness and storage stability at room temperature for up to 14 days. This enables reliable patient-centric microsampling for longitudinal biomarker studies.
Untargeted metabolomic profiles from three blood microsampling devices aligned more closely with whole blood than with plasma, and all devices distinguished sex based on amino acids, lipids, and acylcarnitines. This validates that device choice can be tailored to the metabolites of interest for decentralised human biomonitoring.
The study found that VAMS devices exhibited elevated background metal concentrations that often matched or exceeded levels found in venous blood, complicating trace element analysis. Although a cleaning protocol reduced some background noise, persistent contamination limits the current efficacy of this microsampling method for environmental biomonitoring.
A comparison of three patient-centric dried blood microsampling devices, paper DBS, Mitra and Tasso-M20, found strong to excellent correlation with traditional venous plasma for measuring branched-chain amino acids and ketoacids. Participants reported high acceptability and expressed a strong willingness to use these devices for decentralised self-collection.