Supercritical fluid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry for lipidomics

Supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has experienced a particular revival in recent years thanks to the development of robust and efficient commercial systems. Because of its physico-chemical properties, supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) mixed with cosolvents and additives is particularly suitable for SFC to allow the elution of compounds of different polarities and more particularly complex lipids. Hyphenation with mass spectrometry (MS) is increasingly described in the literature but still requires many further developments in order to be as user-friendly as coupling with liquid chromatography. The basic concepts of SFC and MS hyphenation will be first considered. Then a representative example of method development in lipidomics will be introduced. In conclusion, the challenges and future needs in this field of research will be discussed.