“Towards the development of a Confirmatory Diagnostic Test for Parkinson’s Disease using skin swabs, what we have done and what remains”

Hosts: Varsha Singh & Esther Sammler

Venue: MSI Small Lecture Theatre, SLS

Barran Bio Sketch  

Professor Barran holds a Chair of Mass Spectrometry in the Department of Chemistry and is the Director of the Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative Mass Spectrometry and a member of Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, The University of Manchester, UK.  

She is the deputy chair of the Infrastructure and Capital Advisory Group for the Medical Research Council, UK. 

  Her research interests include: Biological mass spectrometry; Instrument and technique development; Protein structure and interactions; Dynamic and Disordered Systems; Parkinson’s disease Diagnostics; HDX-MS; Proteomics; and Molecular modeling. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was awarded the Theophilus Redwood Award from the RSC in 2019, Researcher of the Year 2020 from the University of Manchester and the ACS Measurement Science Lectureship 2021. In 2020 she initiated the COVID-19 Mass Spectrometry Coalition and was appointed as Chief Advisor to the UK Government on Mass Spectrometry as part of their pandemic response. Perdita has had the privilege to mentor 35 graduate students through the successful completion of their PhD’s. as well as 16 postdoctoral fellows.  Perdita has authored over 200 publications in peer reviewed journals which have been cited over 4000 times, by people other than her.  

In 2021 Perdita founded the company Sebomix Ltd. to exploit sebum as a diagnostic biofluid with a focus on Parkinson’s Disease.  

  Adventures with Mass Spectrometry and Joy 

  Our research program uses mass spectrometry (MS) to find biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease to enable diagnosis [1-3]. We do this from endogenous compounds excreted with sebum and obtained from skin swabs. In lab, we can determine if an individual has PD with >95% accuracy [3].  Our unique research program has been initiated by Mrs. Joy Milne, a retired nurse from Perth who noticed a change in her husband's body odour 11 years before his clinical diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Joy noticed the same distinctive odour was associated with other PD sufferers and hence linked it to onset of the disease. 

  We have also used metabolomics from sebum to reveal alterations in the regulation of lipid synthesis and the carnitine cycle as PD progresses [2]. Recently we demonstrated the equivalence of sebum to serum as a diagnostic biofluid [4].  

  Based on Joy's observation, with simple non-invasive sampling of skin from the upper back, we have developed a diagnostic platform that is able to classify PD from sebum samples with >95% accuracy. The focus of our work to date has been to detect and identify the compound(s) that encompass the unique odour of PD. We have now assessed the feasibility and quality of information provided by using sebum as a diagnostic biofluid via multiple mass spectrometry (MS) based analytical methods, and are now positioned to translate these methods, by incorporating clinical data to stratify PD diagnosis from prodromal to overt. 

  This talk will discuss our methodological approach, recent findings and give a perspective on the use of sebum for non-invasive sampling. 

  I will also make reference to some of the other adventures with mass spectrometry in our labs in Manchester. 

  References 

1. Trivedi et al. (2019), “Discovery of volatile biomarkers of Parkinson’s disease from sebum”, ACS Central Sciences, 5 (4): 599-606 
2. Sinclair et al. (2021), “Metabolomics of sebum reveals lipid dysregulation in Parkinson’s disease”, Nature Communications, 12, 1592 
3. Sarkar et al. (2022), “Paperspray ionisation ion mobility mass spectrometry of sebum classifies biomarker classes for the diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease”, JACS AU 2, 9, 2013–2022 
4. Spick et al. (2022), “An integrated analysis and comparison of serum, saliva and sebum for COVID-19 metabolomics”, Scientific reports, 12, 11867 
5. Pereira et al. (2022), “Multiomics implicate gut microbiota in altered lipid and energy metabolism in Parkinson’s disease”, npj Parkinson’s disease, 8, 39