Metabolomics has emerged as a key discipline for the characterization of endogenous and exogenous small molecules in a larger effort to understand the genetic and environmental causes of disease. Surveillance of chemical exposure and disease-related changes in metabolite profiles for large cohorts and sample sizes requires analytical platforms offering rapid measurements, high sensitivity, efficient separations, wide dynamic ranges, and applicability to a broad chemical space. In this presentation a new metabolomics platform will be highlighted that meets these needs by combining solid phase extractions with ion mobility spectrometry and mass spectrometry (SPE-IMS-MS). This platform is capable of performing both targeted and global measurements of endogenous and exogenous metabolites in human biofluids and environmental samples with high reproducibility (CV ≤3%), sensitivity (LODs in the pM range in biofluids) and throughput (10-s sample-to-sample duty cycle). The combination of these three separation techniques also allows in depth metabolite characterization since the SPE distinguishes each based on chemical class, IMS by structure and MS by mass, allowing isomeric separations and rapid high throughputs that are difficult in other platforms. This SPE-IMS-MS platform overcomes many challenges for large scale metabolomic and exposomic analyses and is a viable way of screening populations, large samples sizes and patient cohorts for insight into disease processes and human exposure. This presentation will illustrate the advantages of this platform and display challenges we are addressing to make the platform viable for the metabolomics community such as the need for more rapid sample extractions and the construction of a large collision cross section database for metabolite identification.

Sub-Minute comprehensive metabolomic analyses of biofluid and environmental samples using SPE-IMS-MS

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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