Investigation of Hair Follicle and Plasma Biomarkers for Low-Level VX Vapor Exposure; Conference paper

摘要

Currently, there are no field-ready and expedient assays able to determine whether someone has been exposed to very low-level chemical warfare agent (CWA). Furthermore, if it were known that a person had been exposed, there is a paucity of information regarding the potential for transient or persistent neurological or other injuries. While our laboratory is working to address both of these problems, our recent work toward finding a more expedient method of detecting low-level agent exposure is addressed in this manuscript. Our laboratory has used two approaches on three different tissues in order to identify molecular indicators (biomarkers) of exposure to VX, an organophosphate (OP) nerve agent. The work described in this manuscript utilizes a whole mount immunohistochemistry (IHC) technique on whisker hair follicles and liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC/MS) on blood plasma to mine for metabolic biomarkers of VX exposure. To date, the work has identified several promising proteins in the follicle and a panel of interesting plasma metabolite markers in the plasma and liver that can discriminate VX exposure versus air as well as level of VX exposure.