Flow Injection Traveling-Wave Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry for Prostate-Cancer Metabolomics

Flow injection-traveling-wave ion mobility-mass spectrometry (FI-TWIM-MS) was applied to the nontargeted metabolic profiling of serum extracts from 61 prostate-cancer (PCa) patients and 42 controls with an analysis speed of 6 min per sample, including a 3 min wash run. Comprehensive data mining of the mobility mass domain was used to discriminate species with various charge states and filter matrix salt cluster ions. Specific criteria were developed to ensure correct grouping of adducts, in source fragments, and impurities in the data set. Endogenous metabolites were identified with high confidence using FI-TWIM-MS/MS and collision-cross-section (CCS) matching with chemical standards or CCS databases. PCa patient samples were distinguished from control samples with good accuracies (88.3-89.3%), sensitivities (88.5-90.2%), and specificity (88.1%) using supervised multivariate classification methods. Although largely underutilized in metabolomics studies, FI-TWIM-MS proved advantageous in terms of analysis speed, separation of ions in complex mixtures, improved signal-to-noise ratio, and reduction of spectral congestion. Results from this study showcase the potential of FI-TWIM-MS as a high-throughput metabolic-profiling tool for large-scale metabolomics studies.