Breast Cancer Spatial Metabolome Analysis

Introduction of Spatial Metabolome

Breast cancer (BC) tumor cells meet their malignant proliferation through metabolic reprogramming, so the comprehensive and in-depth characterization of BC tumor metabolic characteristics provides a new opportunity for finding potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Spatial metabolomics integrates mass spectrometry imaging and metabolomics techniques. Mass spectrometry imaging can accurately identify and localize the ability of differential distribution of multiple metabolites in tissues and even cells. Metabolomics can perform in-depth metabolomics analysis on target microregional tissues and obtain the ability of metabolite types and contents, to realize the detection of metabolite types, contents, and spatial distribution of biological samples. This technology can explain the differences in biological metabolic processes from three dimensions: qualitative, quantitative, and localization, which greatly improves the cognition of sample information.

Fig. 1. MALDI, DESI, and AFADESI schematics. (He MJ, et al., 2022)

Breast Cancer Spatial Metabolome Analysis Services

Alfa Cytology can provide you with BC spatial metabolome analysis services. Precisely locating the distribution of metabolites in tissues is crucial for elucidating the mechanisms of metabolite synthesis, accumulation, and regulation in organisms. Our research technique is as follows:

• MALDI-MSI

Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-IMS) is performed under vacuum, thus requiring samples to be freeze-dried before analysis. The types of metabolites detected by MALDI are usually: proteins, peptides, and lipids.

• DESI-MSI

DESI-IMS uses the original principle of electrospray ionization, which can perform fast and less destructive chemical screening, and can accurately observe molecules in tissues with µm resolution, and the data set can provide a picture of each detected analyte. DESI-IMS analysis does not require complex sample preparation and is mostly used to detect lipid metabolites.

• AFADESI-MSI

Aerodynamic-assisted desorption electrospray mass spectrometry imaging (AFADESI-MSI) technology is an upgrade based on DESI-IMS technology, which can solve the bottleneck of a few metabolites identified by DESI-IMS. The temporal and spatial changes of functional metabolites can be linked with tissue structure and biological function, which is helpful for molecular histology and molecular pathology research. Commonly used to detect small molecule metabolites below 1000Da, such as choline, polyamines, amino acids, carnitines, nucleosides, nucleosides, organic acids, carbohydrates, cholesterol, bile acids, lipids, etc.

Application Fields

• BC molecular mechanism
• BC tumor metabolism and tumor immunity
• Molecular pathological diagnosis of BC tumors
• BC biomarker screening

Advantages of Our Services

• High-resolution platform
• Professional analysis
• Single-cell localization
• A professional team of scientists

Alfa Cytology is a leading global CRO company. Our complete, optimized, and easy-to-operate workflows provide you with fast, accurate, and reproducible results to help you achieve your research goals. We provide personalized, innovative, complete sequencing service solutions, if you are interested in learning more about our BC multi-omic analysis services, please feel free to contact us. Our professional and patient staff will get in touch with you as soon as possible.