Mass Spectrometry as a Tool for Disease Metabolite Studies
Ajit Datar,
Advisor,
Shimadzu Analytical (India) Pvt Ltd
In the field of Biology, the functional analyses at “Omics” level have been growing rapidly from the beginning of 21st Century. These include Genomics, Transcriptomics, Proteomics, Metabolomics and Lipidomics etc. Metabolomics offers unique advantage over other ‘Omics’ techniques as the number of human metabolites are only 2400 compared to more than million proteins need to be analyzed in the field of proteomics. Mass Spectrometry (MS) hyphenated to Gas Chromatography (GC) and High performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) are the most widely accepted analytical techniques for metabolite discovery.
Tandem MS has unique advantage of great specificity and exquisite sensitivity to identify hundreds of metabolites in a single run. Tandem MS has already proven itself in determining Inborn Error of Metabolism (IEM) for New Born Screening (NBS)
There are several examples in literature for the disease diagnosis using MS e.g. Cancer, coronary heart disease, neurological disorders, many infectious diseases.
Shimadzu Corporation, Japan is committed to “Contributing to society through Science and Technology” has come out with different Tandem MS techniques for this comparatively new field. The collaboration with Shimane University and Kobe University, Japan have led to the a very important metabolite data base for various diseases including methods of analysis for certain metabolite markers which are upregulated or down regulated for diagnosis/prognosis of diseases. The Triple Quad GC-MS/MS and LC-MS/MS systems manufactured by Shimadzu are explained with the data base of metabolites available for some of the diseases and the scope of using the systems for research in this field.
The elemental composition and deficiency or excess concentration of some key elements in body fluids (called as Metallomics) are also significant in clinical diagnosis of certain diseases. The Atomic Spectroscopic techniques like Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS), Inductively Coupled Plasma E
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