Future of Liquid Chromatography–Mass Spectrometry in Metabolic Profiling and Metabolomic Studies for Biomarker Discovery

Abstract

The future utility of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) in metabolic profiling and metabolomic studies for biomarker discovery is discussed, beginning with a brief description of the evolution of metabolomics and the utilization of the three most popular analytical platforms in such studies: nuclear magnetic resonance, gas chromatography-MS and LC–MS. Emphasis is placed on recent developments in high-efficiency LC separations, sensitive electrospray ionization approaches and the benefits of incorporating both in LC–MS-based approaches. The advantages and disadvantages of various quantitative approaches are reviewed, followed by the current LC–MS-based tools available for candidate biomarker characterization and identification. Finally, a brief prediction on the future path of LC–MS-based methods in metabolic profiling and metabolomic studies is given.

Keywords: :

• electrospray
• Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance
• liquid chromatography
• mass spectrometry
• metabolic profiling
• metabolomics

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Drs Navdeep Jaitly and Christina M Sorensen for their assistance in using MultiAlign. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the following for the work presented in this manuscript: NIH grants DK071283 and DK07014601. Portions of the work were performed as part of an EMSL scientific Grand Challenge project at the WR Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and sponsored by the US Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research program. Additional support for portions of this work was provided by the NIH National Center for Research Resources (RR18522). PNNL is operated by Battelle for the DOE under Contract No. DE-AC06-76RLO-1830."

Additional information

Funding

We wish to thank Drs Navdeep Jaitly and Christina M Sorensen for their assistance in using MultiAlign. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the following for the work presented in this manuscript: NIH grants DK071283 and DK07014601. Portions of the work were performed as part of an EMSL scientific Grand Challenge project at the WR Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national scientific user facility located at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and sponsored by the US Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research program. Additional support for portions of this work was provided by the NIH National Center for Research Resources (RR18522). PNNL is operated by Battelle for the DOE under Contract No. DE-AC06-76RLO-1830."