Rapid Prostate Cancer Noninvasive Biomarker Screening Using Segmented Flow Mass Spectrometry-Based Untargeted Metabolomics

• Published in: Journal of proteome research Vol. 19; no. 5; pp. 2080 - 2091
• Main Authors: Pinto, Frederico G, Mahmud, Iqbal, Harmon, Taylor A, Rubio, Vanessa Y, Garrett, Timothy J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 01-05-2020
• Subjects: urine liquid biopsy; high-resolution mass spectrometry; prostate cancer; noninvasive biomarker; metabolomics; segmented flow
• ISSN: 1535-3893; 1535-3907
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.0c00006

Spectrometric methods with rapid biomarker detection capacity through untargeted metabolomics are becoming essential in the clinical cancer research. Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS) is a rapidly developing metabolomic-based biomarker technique due to its high sensitivity, reproducibility, and separation efficiency. However, its translation to clinical diagnostics is often limited due to long data acquisition times (∼20 min/sample) and laborious sample extraction procedures when employed for large-scale metabolomics studies. Here, we developed a segmented flow approach coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (SF–HRMS) for untargeted metabolomics, which has the capability to acquire data in less than 1.5 min/sample with robustness and reproducibility relative to LC–HRMS. The SF–HRMS results demonstrate the capability for screening metabolite-based urinary biomarkers associated with prostate cancer (PCa). The study shows that SF–HRMS-based global metabolomics has the potential to evolve into a rapid biomarker screening tool for clinical research.