Biomarkers for respiratory diseases: Present applications and future discoveries

Abstract

Biomarkers such as clinical characteristics and laboratory indices have been widely used in many respiratory diseases, such as chronic airway diseases, lung infection, lung cancer and acute respiratory distress syndrome. As such, various non‐invasive and invasive samples, such as blood, urine, induced sputum, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and lung biopsy are currently being collected. Omics‐based discovery strategies facilitate the identification of next‐generation candidate biomarkers. The identification and integration of multiple omics biomarkers (genomics, epigenomics, proteomics, metabolomics and radiomics) can answer many unsolved questions about respiratory diseases. The ultimate realization of the translation of novel biomarkers into clinical practice is a major challenge because good biomarkers must be sensitive, technically feasible, non‐invasive, non‐expensive and most importantly, validated. The four stages of clinical trial design in the development of biomarkers are also discussed. The concept of systems biology not only focuses on novel molecular biomarkers but also integrates clinical, laboratory and omics information as a whole. Finally, developing multiple biomarker panels is a goal to improve the healthcare of respiratory diseases.

Roles of glutamic pyruvate transaminase 2 in reprogramming of airway epithelial lipidomic and metabolomic profiles after smoking

“…COPD is a highly heterogeneous disease characterised by systemic and local metabolic alterations compared to other lung diseases 16,24,29,30 . Metabolomics and lipidomics are increasingly employed to investigate the pathogenesis of COPD, unravel the complexity of chronic lung diseases, and discover disease‐specific biomarkers of prognosis and subtyping COPD patients 31–33 . Metabolic disorders were correlated with the severity of lung dysfunction in acute exacerbation of COPD patients, of which perturbations of alanine, aspartate, and glutamate in airway epithelial cells were modelled as the critical pathway in experimental chronic lung inflammation and injury 34 .…”

“… 16 , 24 , 29 , 30 Metabolomics and lipidomics are increasingly employed to investigate the pathogenesis of COPD, unravel the complexity of chronic lung diseases, and discover disease‐specific biomarkers of prognosis and subtyping COPD patients. 31 , 32 , 33 Metabolic disorders were correlated with the severity of lung dysfunction in acute exacerbation of COPD patients, of which perturbations of alanine, aspartate, and glutamate in airway epithelial cells were modelled as the critical pathway in experimental chronic lung inflammation and injury. 34 Our data showed smoking per se altered the metabolic pathways of alanine, aspartate, and glutamate in airway epithelial cells.…”

CC16 as an Inflammatory Biomarker in Induced Sputum Reflects Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) Severity

“…Induced sputum has been widely acknowledged to be a noninvasive and repeatable sampling method to evaluate the patterns of inflammatory cells and the concentrations of various inflammatory mediators, which would assess local airway inflammation more accurately. [25][26][27] The aim of this study was to determine whether different inflammatory biomarkers are associated with lung function and inflammatory phenotypes in COPD patients and which inflammatory biomarkers play a vital role. Based on previous studies, we measured the expression of several inflammatory biomarkers in the induced sputum of COPD patients.…”