Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a heterogeneous cancer often showing late symptoms. Until now, some candidate protein markers have been proposed for its diagnosis. Metabolomics approaches have been applied, predominantly using Mass Spectrometry (MS), while Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based studies remain limited. There is no study about RCC integrating NMR-based metabolomics with transcriptomics. In this work, 1H-NMR spectroscopy combined with multivariate statistics was applied on urine samples, collected from 40 patients with clear cell RCC (ccRCC) before nephrectomy and 29 healthy controls; nine out of 40 patients also provided samples one-month after nephrectomy. We observed increases of creatine, alanine, lactate and pyruvate, and decreases of hippurate, citrate, and betaine in all ccRCC patients. A network analysis connected most of these metabolites with glomerular injury, renal inflammation and renal necrosis/cell death. Interestingly, intersecting metabolites with transcriptomic data from CD133+/CD24+ tumoral renal stem cells isolated from ccRCC patients, we found that both genes and metabolites differentially regulated in ccRCC patients belonged to HIF-α signaling, methionine and choline degradation, and acetyl-CoA biosynthesis. Moreover, when comparing urinary metabolome of ccRCC patients after nephrectomy, some processes, such as the glomerular injury, renal hypertrophy, renal necrosis/cell death and renal proliferation, were no more represented.

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In the last decade, the bacterial pathogen Xylella fastidiosa has devastated olive trees throughout Apulia region (Southern Italy) in the form of the disease called “Olive Quick Decline Syndrome” (OQDS). This study describes changes in the metabolic profile due to the infection by X. fastidiosa subsp. pauca ST53 in artificially inoculated young olive plants of the susceptible variety Cellina di Nardò. The test plants, grown in a thermo-conditioned greenhouse, were also co-inoculated with some xylem-inhabiting fungi known to largely occur in OQDS-affected trees, in order to partially reproduce field conditions in terms of biotic stress. The investigations were performed by combining NMR spectroscopy and MS spectrometry with a non-targeted approach for the analysis of leaf extracts. Statistical analysis revealed that Xylella-infected plants were characterized by higher amounts of malic acid, formic acid, mannitol, and sucrose than in Xylella-non-infected ones, whereas it revealed slightly lower amounts of oleuropein. Attention was paid to mannitol which may play a central role in sustaining the survival of the olive tree against bacterial infection. This study contributes to describe a set of metabolites playing a possible role as markers in the infections by X. fastidiosa in olive.

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