The activities carried out in the first stage (September-December 2025) aimed to initiate studies in the Institute of Mother and Child (IMC) in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova and in the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance laboratory from "Petru Poni" Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Iasi, Romania.
The activities proposed for this first stage involved enrolling the subjects for dynamic studies, the collection of biological samples and the execution of an initial clinical consultation. During this phase, a first transfer of know-how from the Romanian research team to the partners in the Republic of Moldova took place. Training activities began in the NMR laboratories of the coordinator (ICMPP) for colleagues from the Republic of Moldova (IMC). Thus, 5 participants from the Republic of Moldova completed internships within the project at the "Petru Poni" Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Iasi. During the internships, the methods of preparing biological samples for NMR analyses were explained in detail and familiarization with the NMR spectrometers began.
During the first stage, 6 patients with phenylketonuria, 2 patients with galactosemia, 10 young patients with obesity were registered, a patient with suspected cervical cancer was temporarily registered and 6 clinically healthy subjects were registered for the control group. Biological samples (serum, plasma, urine) were collected for the registered subjects. The samples were stored intermediately at -80°C at the IMC collection point and subsequently transferred, on dry ice (-78°C), to the Coordinator (ICMPP), where they were stored in the biobank at -80°C until the NMR studies were performed. For some of these biological samples, a series of NMR experiments were recorded for advanced metabolomics and lipidomics studies. Several one-dimensional NMR experiments were recorded: 1H gradient profile, 1H NMR without water suppression, 1H NMR with noesypresat water suppression sequence, 1H with CPMG pulse sequence, 1H with PGPE sequence and 1H with DIRE sequence. Additionally, two-dimensional proton-proton correlation spectra like JRES and COSY were recorded, to facilitate the signals assignment to metabolites of interest. |
