DMS-Prefiltered Mass Spectrometry for the Detection of Biomarkers

摘要

Technologies based on Differential Mobility Spectrometry (DMS) are ideally matched to rapid, sensitive, and selectivedetection of chemicals like biomarkers. Biomarkers linked to exposure to radiation, exposure to CWA's, exposure totoxic materials (TICs and TIMs) and to specific diseases are being examined in a number of laboratories. Screening forthese types of exposure can be improved in accuracy and greatly speeded up by using DMS-MS instead of slowertechniques like LC-MS and GC-MS. We have performed an extensive series of tests with nanospray-DMS-massspectroscopy and standalone nanospray-DMS obtaining extensive information on chemistry and detectivity. DMS-MSsystems implemented with low-resolution, low-cost, portable mass-spectrometry systems are very promising. Low-resolution mass spectrometry alone would be inadequate for the task, but with DMS pre-filtration to suppressinterferences, can be quite effective, even for quantitative measurement. Bio-fluids and digests are well suited to ionization by electrospray and detection by mass-spectrometry, but signals fromcritical markers are overwhelmed by chemical noise from unrelated species, making essential quantitative analysisimpossible. Sionex and collaborators have presented data using DMS to suppress chemical noise, allowing detection ofcancer biomarkers in 10,000-fold excess of normal products~(1,2). In addition, a linear dynamic range of pproximately2, 000 has been demonstrated with accurate quantitation~3.We will review the range of possible applications and presentnew data on DMS-MS biomarker detection.