title: Current medical research with the application of coupled techniques with mass spectrometry.
abstract: The most effective methods of analysis of organic compounds in biological fluids are coupled chromatographic techniques. Capillary gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS) allows the most efficient separation, identification and quantification of volatile metabolites in biological fluids. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is especially suitable for the analysis of non-volatile and/or thermally unstable compounds. A major drawback of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry is that no standard spectral libraries such as NIST and Wiley for GC-MS are available to facilitate the identification of unknown compounds. Moreover, the identification of potential new compounds, especially new biomarkers in LC-MS, is much more challenging than in GC-MS. Capillary electrophoresis coupled with mass spectrometry (CE-MS) has been widely used to characterize metabolomes. Capillary electrophoresis is a powerful technique for the separation of charged metabolites, offering high analyte resolution. The advantages of CE-MS are applicability for hydrophilic metabolites, robust separation efficiency and short duration of analysis. This review provides an overview of current chromatographic methods--gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry--and their applications in current medical research. The focus is on the description of metabonomics research, strategies for biomarkers identification, medical diagnoses of diseases and research of drugs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Institute of General and Ecological Chemistry, Technical University of Lodz, Lodz, Poland. jkaluzna@p.lodz.pl
authors.forename: Joanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kałużna-Czaplińska
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000379:methods*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D008659:Metabolic Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000378:metabolism; D055432:Metabolomics; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy