Resolving Complex Lipid Structures

Dr. Kim Ekroos is the founder and CEO of Lipidomics Consulting Ltd. His expertise includes high-throughput technologies for the precise assessment of lipidomes enabled by advanced mass spectrometry, automation, and software tools towards discovery of biological architectures and of diagnostic biomarkers for clinical purpose. He is one of the pioneers in the field of lipidomics, with more than 20 years of experience in the academic, industry and regulatory disciplines of lipidomics and lipid biology. His work has among others resulted in the first-ever establishment of lipidomics based lipid biomarkers in clinical diagnostics. He is a co-founder of the Lipidomics Standards Initiative (LSI) and the president of the International Lipidomics Society. Dr. Ekroos has been a collaborator with MOBILion for 2 years, using HRIM-MS to untangle the lipidome, to identify potential biomarkers associated with the progression of Parkinson's Disease.

Defects in sphingolipid metabolism have emerged as a common link across neurodegenerative disorders, and a deeper understanding of the lipid content in preclinical models and patient specimens offers opportunities for development of new therapeutic targets and biomarkers. (1)

Current workflows rely on LC/MS based approaches.  However due to the close structural heterogeneity, the presence of isobaric and isomeric species, and broad dynamic range of endogenous glycosphingolipids these assays can be challenging and time consuming, often taking over an hour without offering baseline resolution.

The incorporation of MOBIE into the workflow enables rapid, repeatable quantitative assays to resolve brain gangliosides at the molecular level, while reducing the dependence on Liquid Chromatography separation.