Probing the biocompatibility of Mo₂C nanosheet through an integrated metabolomics approach: Toward boosting energy metabolism

An Mo₂C nanosheet is an important two-dimensional nanomaterial with distinguished catalytic activity in biochemical applications. However, detailed information on Mo₂C-induced changes in metabolic shifts, biosafety, and molecular mechanisms is insufficient. Integrated metabolomics (including aqueous metabolomics, lipidomics, and spatial metabolomics) has provided an excellent choice with massive bioinformation. In addition, the notion of “nanometabolomics” was first proposed and utilized to refer to these metabolomics studies on the biosafety, biocompatibility, and biological response of nanomaterials. Nanometabolomics innovatively combined nanoscience and metabolomics with massive bioinformation at the molecular level. For instance, in this work, nanometabolomics specialized in probing an Mo₂C-induced metabolic shift of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) through integrated metabolomics. Furthermore, integrated metabolomics was used to examine the metabolic shift of HUVECs at the metabolome and lipidome levels, as well as the spatial distribution of different metabolites. The findings demonstrated that high doses (1 mg/ml) of an Mo₂C nanosheet might produce an immediate improvement in HUVECs’ energy metabolism, which was closely related to the improved morphology and function of mitochondria. The integrated metabolomics outcomes of this unique “Mo₂C-cell” system increased our understanding of an Mo₂C nanosheet. The proposed new word “nanometabolomics” could also be considered an excellent notion in representing nanomaterial-involved metabolomics studies.