Comparative study on microsampling techniques in metabolic fingerprinting studies applying gas chromatography-MS analysis

Abstract

Aim: Sample collection and preparation are important steps in the metabolomics workflow. Any improvement should be aimed toward making them simpler, faster and more reproducible. This paper describes the evaluation of different types of whole blood microsampling techniques applied in a metabolic fingerprinting study of breast cancer patients.

Results: A total of 139, 124 and 128 metabolites were identified in protein precipitation, dried matrix on paper discs and Mitra^® volumetric absorptive microsampling, respectively in 80% of the sample sets, where the quality control samples had a relative standard deviation of <30%. Ten metabolites in breast cancer samples were detected as being altered significantly (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: Our results suggest that whole blood microsampling techniques do not obtain statistically different results in comparison with the metabolomics applied standard reference method of protein precipitation, in terms of the number of detected compounds, the reproducibility and modeling of differences between the groups.

Keywords: breast cancer; gas chromatography–MS; metabolic fingerprinting; microsampling; nontargeted metabolomics.