Determination of Brain Tissue Samples Storage Conditions for Reproducible Intraoperative Lipid Profiling

Abstract

Ex-vivo molecular profiling has recently emerged as a promising method for intraoperative tissue identification, especially in neurosurgery. The short-term storage of resected samples at room temperature is proposed to have negligible influence on the lipid molecular profiles. However, a detailed investigation of short-term molecular profile stability is required to implement molecular profiling in a clinic. This study evaluates the effect of storage media, temperature, and washing solution to determine conditions that provide stable and reproducible molecular profiles, with the help of ambient ionization mass spectrometry using rat cerebral cortex as model brain tissue samples. Utilizing normal saline for sample storage and washing media shows a positive effect on the reproducibility of the spectra; however, the refrigeration shows a negligible effect on the spectral similarity. Thus, it was demonstrated that up to hour-long storage in normal saline, even at room temperature, ensures the acquisition of representative molecular profiles using ambient ionization mass spectrometry.

Wooden-Tip Electrospray Mass Spectrometry Characterization of Human Hemoglobin in Whole Blood Sample for Thalassemia Screening: A Pilot Study

“…Ambient MS methods are of great interest for direct analysis of raw samples because analytes can be easily ionized with no or little sample pretreatment process [15][16][17][18]. Ambient MS is pioneered by desorption electrospray ionization (DESI), which allows direct determination of various analytes such as proteins from raw biological samples under ambient conditions [15].…”