This week's Mass Spec News

Essential Reading

Triple Success 
 

Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most aggressive tumor types, characterized by chemotherapy-resistant and very “stiff” lesions – making it challenging to treat.

Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina recently developed a promising new agent, LXG6403, that could help overcome these issues – targeting the driver of this aggressive tumorigenesis and progression, a protein known as lysyl oxidase (LOX). To test the efficiency and permeability of their drug/inhibitor combined MALDI-MS imaging with extracellular matrix (ECM)-targeted proteomics – enabling them to visualize the architecture and layout of proteins within the tumors and adapt their LOX inhibitor to achieve maximal performance. 

“We collected the tumor tissue and analyzed the proteome with different mass spec approaches, and we could see that our inhibitor has a huge impact on the ECM, collagen and other structural proteins,” explained corresponding author Ozgur Sahin in a press release. The team is waiting to get the green light to move on with clinical trials of LXG6403 and are hopeful their drug could be useful for other LOX-driven diseases, like pancreatic and kidney cancer.

Worth Your Time...

Scientists successfully  discriminate between adulterated and authentic saffron –  employing UPLC-ESI-TOF mass spec and untargeted metabolomics. Link

Nancy Shyrley García-Rojas and her colleagues introduce the Open SprayBot – a  high-throughput paper spray mass spectrometry platform for screening of newborn diseases. Link

Cirrhosis-dependent gut microbiota, such as Veillonella bacteria, present unique signatures and could be targeted for diagnostic purposes, suggests LC-MS and MALDI-TOF based study. Link

Researchers develop a collaborative robotic plate transfer system (CRPTS) for IR-MALDESI-MS, overcoming time consuming sample prep steps. Link

Community Corner

Quantifying Forever in Fish
 

Forever chemicals like PFAS may find their way into the human body through food consumption – and specifically, fish! To assess the risks, we could monitor popular fishing spots and measure levels of PFAS exposure, but with available testing methods it would only cover a small portion of the compounds. And that’s why Erin Baker and colleagues decided to assess PFAS in the filets of fish collected from recreational and drinking waters in North Carolina. Could they detect additional forever chemicals in these fish samples that could not be detected using conventional targeted methods?

The researchers employed LC-IMS-MS for their untargeted PFAS analysis, which revealed a total of 36 PFAS in the fish filets – 19 of which could not be detected using common targeted methods. 

“Future PFAS monitoring in this region should target more of these 36 PFAS, and other regions not considered heavily PFAS contaminated should consider incorporating non-targeted analyses into ongoing fish monitoring studies,” concluded the authors in their study.