This article is available online at http://www.jlr.org For many years, HDL lipids were predominantly characterized in terms of the content of their major classes, notably phospholipids, unesterifi ed (free) sterols (predominantly cholesterol), cholesteryl esters, and triglycerides. Cholesterol is the most characteristic component of the HDL lipidome as, in the form of HDL-cholesterol, it represents a major independent negative risk factor for cardiovascular disease (see other reviews in this Thematic Series). It is not cholesterol, however, but phospholipids that quantitatively predominate in the HDL lipidome, accounting, together with sphingomyelin (SM), for 40-60 wt% of total lipid, with lesser proportions of cholesteryl esters (30-40%), triglycerides (5-12%), and free cholesterol (5-10%). Structurally, individual HDL lipid classes fulfi ll distinct functions; phospholipids constitute the surface lipid monolayer of HDL, whereas cholesteryl esters and triglycerides form the hydrophobic lipid core. Unesterifi ed sterols are predominantly located to the surface monolayer, partially penetrating the core.Recent technological advances in mass spectrometry (MS) have enabled application of this powerful technique to provide a detailed identifi cation and quantifi cation of individual molecular species of lipids in the framework of the fi eld known as lipidomics. Application of this approach to plasma lipoproteins has revealed complex profi les consisting of hundreds of molecular lipid species that have been quantifi ed in major lipoprotein classes, including HDL (reviewed in Refs. 1-3 High density lipoproteins (HDL) are small, dense, protein-rich particles compared with other plasma lipoprotein classes. Despite the elevated abundance of multiple structural and functional proteins in HDL particles (see other reviews in this Thematic Series), roughly half of total HDL mass is accounted for by lipid components.