Metabolic Profiling and Compound-Class Identification Reveal Alterations in Serum Triglyceride Levels in Mice Immunized with Human Vaccine Adjuvant Alum

Abstract

Alum has been widely used as an adjuvant for human vaccines; however, the impact of Alum on host metabolism remains largely unknown. Herein, we applied mass spectrometry (MS) (liquid chromatography-MS)-based metabolic and lipid profiling to monitor the effects of the Alum adjuvant on mouse serum at 6, 24, 72, and 168 h post-vaccination. We propose a new strategy termed subclass identification and annotation for metabolomics for class-wise identification of untargeted metabolomics data generated from high-resolution MS. Using this approach, we identified and validated the levels of several lipids in mouse serum that were significantly altered following Alum administration. These lipids showed a biphasic response even 168 h after vaccination. The majority of the lipids were triglycerides (TAGs), where TAGs with long-chain unsaturated fatty acids (FAs) decreased at 24 h and TAGs with short-chain FAs decreased at 168 h. To our knowledge, this is the first report on the impact of human vaccine adjuvant Alum on the host metabolome, which may provide new insights into the mechanism of action of Alum.

Keywords

Alum adjuvant; human vaccine; mass spectrometry; metabolomics

Published in

Journal of Proteome Research
2020, Volume: 19, number: 1, pages: 269-278 Publisher: AMER CHEMICAL SOC

SLU Authors

• Moritz, Thomas

  • Department of Forest Genetics and Plant Physiology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG3 Good health and well-being


UKÄ Subject classification

Pharmacology and Toxicology
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.9b00517

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/103956