Lipidomic analysis reveals novel biomarkers in plasma extracellular vesicles from COVID-19 patients 9415

Abstract Description The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 remains a public health problem. Bioactive lipids including glucosylceramides (GlcCer) have been shown to induce inflammatory responses and cellular apoptosis. We hypothesized COVID-19 positive patients release a unique population of plasma extracellular vesicles (pEVs) enriched in bioactive lipids that could contribute to inflammatory and cell death pathways. First, pEVs were isolated from plasma samples of COVID-19 positive and COVID-19 negative patients under IRB protocol 2020-0065 and then characterized by nanoparticle tracking analysis, Western blotting, and transmission electron microscopy. A lipidomic analysis showed enrichment of several GlcCer lipids including glcCer(d18:1/16:0) and GlcCer(d18:1/24:1) in pEVs from COVID-19 positive patients. Conversely, there were several diacylglycerols that were enriched in the pEVs from the COVID-19 negative patients. Human aortic endothelial cells treated with pEVs from COVID-19 positive patients showed an increase in inflammatory and cell death pathways. Future studies will be performed to investigate whether glucosylceramide synthase inhibitors could ameliorate these adverse responses. Funding Sources This work was funded by a University of Florida Center for Integrative Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disease pilot award, NIH grant (1R01DE031928-01A1 to S.C.G), and NIH Shared Instrumentation Grant (1S10OD018141 to N.D.D.). Topic Categories Viral Immunology (VIR)