Metabolomic Fingerprints of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder

Project acronym:   SB Fingerprint

Project type:   International Research Projects

Grant agreement No.:   L/ICA/ICB-108/21

Project is funded by:   OPCW (Hag, Netherlands)

The research is conducted in:   University of Belgrade - Faculty of Chemistry (Belgrade, Serbia) – Beneficiary

Project realization is scheduled from December 31, 2021 till December 31, 2024.

Project staff

Short description of the project

Project proposal is a response to the challenges caused by mental diseases, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: (1) demand for the fast, accurate, sensitive and specific method for clinical diagnostic of these psychiatric disorders; (2) request for monitoring of patients responses to medical treatments; and (3) insufficient understanding of the changes in metabolic pathways altered by diseases.
Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder lead to the significant disabilities, functional impairments and premature death. Both disorders are result of the complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors, and the underlying pathophysiology is still incompletely understood. These mental disorders impose important challenges for diagnosis, as they share symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. Current diagnostic criteria, based purely on clinical phenomenology, are limited to the psychiatrist judgment after a standard clinical interview and reports from patients or caretakers.
In order to establish diseases metabolism fingerprints, identification of patient serum metabolites (biomarkers) will be performed by NMR and LC-MS metabolomics and lipidomics analyses associated with chemometrics. For evaluation of biomarkers universality patient blood samples from different geographic areas (Serbia and Brazil) will be analyzed.
Project results would: (1) offer a new, more reliable diagnostic solution for differentiation of schizophrenia from the bipolar disorder, and these disorders from the healthy individuals, based on NMR metabolomics analyses of blood samples; (2) help in better understanding of metabolic changes caused by these psychiatric disorders by detection of disease biomarkers and (3) open a possibility for monitoring of the patients response to medical treatment by determination of identified biomarkers levels in blood serum.
Project results would benefit to the patient life quality, healthcare and scientific community, but also economy, industry and society.

Representative references

1. Katarina Simić, Nina Todorović, Snežana Trifunović, Zoran Miladinović, Aleksandra Gavrilović, Silvana Jovanović, Nataša Avramović, Dejan Gođevac, Ljubodrag Vujisić, Vele Tešević, Ljubica Tasić, and Boris Mandić. NMR Metabolomics in Serum Fingerprinting of Schizophrenia Patients in a Serbian Cohort. Metabolites (2022) 12(8), 707.
2. Katarina Simić, Zoran Miladinović, Nina Todorović, Snežana Trifunović, Nataša Avramović, Aleksandra Gavrilović, Silvana Jovanović, Dejan Gođevac, Ljubodrag Vujisić, Vele Tešević, Ljubica Tasic, and Boris Mandić. Metabolomic Profiling of Bipolar Disorder by 1H-NMR in Serbian Patients. Metabolites (2023) 13(5),607.
3. Milka Jadranin, Nataša Avramović, Zoran Miladinović, Aleksandra Gavrilović, Ljubica Tasic, Vele Tešević, and Boris Mandić. Untargeted Lipidomics Study of Bipolar Disorder Patients in Serbia. International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2023), 24(22): 16025.