Assessment of human plasma and urine sample preparation for re-producible and high-throughput UHPLC-MS clinical metabolic phenotyping

ABSTRACT:

Clinical metabolic phenotyping employs metabolomics and lipidomics to detect and measure thousands of metabolites and lipids within human samples. This approach aims to identify metabolite and lipid changes between phenotypes (e.g. disease status) that aid understanding of biochemical mechanisms driving the phenotype. Sample preparation is a critical step in clinical metabolic phenotyping: it must be reproducible and give a high extraction yield of metabolites and lipids. Here, we assessed the extraction of polar metabolites from human urine and polar metabolites and lipids from human plasma for analysis by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) metabolomics and lipidomics. We evaluated several monophasic (urine and plasma) and biphasic (plasma) extractions, and we also tested alterations to (a) solvent-biofluid incubation time and temperature during monophasic extraction, and (b) phase partitioning time during biphasic extraction. Extracts were analysed by three UHPLC-MS assays: (i) HILIC for urine and plasma, (ii) C18 aqueous reversed phase for urine, and (iii) C18 reversed phase for plasma lipids, and the yield and reproducibility of each method was assessed. For HILIC UHPLC-MS plasma and urine analysis, monophasic 50:50 methanol:acetonitrile had the most detected putatively-identified polar metabolites. If lipid removal from the plasma polar HILIC extract is required, then the biphasic methanol/chloroform/water method is recommended. For C18 (aqueous) UHPLC-MS urine analysis, 50:50 methanol:water had high reproducibility and yield. For C18 UHPLC-MS plasma lipidomics, monophasic 100% isopropanol had the highest detection response of all annotated lipid classes. Increasing monophasic incubation time and temperature had little benefit on metabolite and lipid yield and reproducibility.

INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive

SUBMITTER: Andrew Southam  Ralf Weber 

PROVIDER: MTBLS1465 | MetaboLights | 2020-08-06

REPOSITORIES: MetaboLights