Essential Reading
Mapping the Unknown
Aspirin has a dual role as a painkiller and blood thinning drug – an accidental discovery. Could more everyday medications have unknown benefits that we have not thought of?
Researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, developed a new mass-spec based proteome-wide workflow, decryptE – aiming to characterize the interactions of medical agents with other cellular elements and uncover their unknown therapeutic potential.
“We believe that many widely used drugs will also have effects of which we are still unaware. One of the goals of our research is to systematically seek them out without having to wait for such accidental discoveries,” explained Bernhard Küster, corresponding author and Chair of Proteomics and Bioanalytics, TUM, in a press release.
The team based their approach on Jurkat acute T cell leukemia cells and analyzed 144 drugs from 16 drug classes in a dose dependent manner. They introduced new technical aspects to this workflow: micro-LC and high-field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) – enabling them to successfully profile 8,000 proteins and characterize the behavior of the active agents.
“The difference is that decryptE yields thousands of molecular readouts rather than just one (for example, cell viability or morphology changes). As such, the approach should not be confused with proteomic technologies aiming to elucidate the targets of a drug or illuminating the signaling pathways that lead to a cellular endpoint,” highlight the authors in their paper.
Worth Your Time...
LC-MS-based quantification of DNA methylation (DNAm) in adipose tissue – a factor linked to obesity and insulin resistance – reveals that certain metabolites regulate methylation levels and impact gene expression involved in metabolic health. Link
Scientists identify and quantify 31 common plastic additives in beached plastic debris using HPLC-MS, calling attention to high concentrations of hazardous substances like phthalates. Link
Cooking oil fumes (COF) primarily consist of oxygen-containing organic compounds and could be more harmful to human health when ventilation is poor, suggests study employing HPLC-QToF-MS and Vocus PTR-TOF. Link
Thierry Fouquet and his colleagues review controlled degradation strategies, such as thermal degradation for on-line chemolysis with MS, and assess their ability to tackle the challenges of analyzing high molecular weight or reticulated (co)polymers. Link
Community Corner
Keeping up with the Mass Spectrometrists – And Their Patents
For those keen to track the latest developments in mass spectrometry patents, look no further! There is a new dedicated forum that lets you access all mass spec-related patent activity. Simply visit http://tinyurl.com/massspecpatents to read updates and stay ahead of emerging trends…
And if you are currently working on a patent of your own, make sure to check out this recent article by patent attorney and PhD mass spectrometrist, Thomas Kiselak – who shares his tips and tricks on what inventors need to know.
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