26 Clinical OMICs May/June 2017 www.clinicalomics.com
T
here is nothing uncommon about finding a mass spectrometer (MS) in the
research labs of academia and pharmaceutical companies, or even in the
clinical labs of major hospitals and academic medical centers. For decades
it has been a valuable tool in these settings for the detection of small molecules
and for immunosuppressant monitoring, along with its prominent role in phar-
macokinetic studies in drug clinical trials.
But today, due to significant improvements in the sensitivity and specificity of
mass spec instruments, along with more powerful bioinformatics, the technology
is playing an increasingly important role in the detection and analysis of metab-
olites and proteins that serve as biomarkers for a
range of diseases (see page 28).
"Our ability to map out the proteomic land-
scape within tumor tissue has steadily grown
over the past two decades," said Iain Mylchreest,
Ph.D., vice president, R&D; analytical instruments,
Thermo Fisher Scientific. "Advances in mass spec-
trometry and informatics now allow us to study
protein samples on an unprecedented scale with
increased depth of analysis both qualitatively and quantitatively."
These improvements in MS technologies have helped spur researchers working
in a number of different areas including infectious diseases, automimmune dis-
eases, and cancer, among others.
"With the introduction of the orbitrap family of instruments, where you are
getting both high sensitivity and high resolution, you can do both identification
and verification with a simple instrument for PRM experiments," said Vathany
Kulasingam, Ph.D., a clinical biochemist at University Health Network, Toronto,
whose work focuses on identifying protein biomarkers in ovarian cancer. "That
has helped to almost revolutionize the way we approach our pipeline.
"When we first started in the mid 2000s, we used the LTQ ring ion traps and
we could identify 200, 300, 400 proteins, and we were really excited about that,"
Massive Potential
As Mass Spectrometry's Accuracy
and Specificity Improves,
It Breaks New Ground in Proteomics,
Metabolomics and Diagnostics
Chris Anderson
Editor in Chief
"The idea is to develop a diagnostic
kit that will be available in a high-
throughput format, to run in a clinical
mass spec lab." —Amrit Cheema,
Georgetown University School of
Medicine