Spectrometric methods with rapid biomarker detection capacity through untargeted metabolomics are becoming essential in the clinical cancer research. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is a rapidly developing metabolomic-based biomarker technique due to its high sensitivity, reproducibility, and separation efficiency. However, its translation to clinical diagnostics is often limited due to long data acquisition times (∼20 min/sample) and laborious sample extraction procedures when employed for large-scale metabolomics studies. Here, we developed a segmented flow approach coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (SF-HRMS) for untargeted metabolomics, which has the capability to acquire data in less than 1.5 min/sample with robustness and reproducibility relative to LC-HRMS. The SF-HRMS results demonstrate the capability for screening metabolite-based urinary biomarkers associated with prostate cancer (PCa). The study shows that SF-HRMS-based global metabolomics has the potential to evolve into a rapid biomarker screening tool for clinical research.

中文翻译：

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使用基于分段流质谱的非靶向代谢组学快速筛查前列腺癌非侵入性生物标志物。

通过非靶向代谢组学快速检测生物标志物的光谱方法在临床癌症研究中变得至关重要。液相色谱-质谱法（LC-MS）是一种快速发展的基于代谢组学的生物标记技术，因为它具有很高的灵敏度，可重复性和分离效率。然而，由于用于大型代谢组学研究的数据采集时间长（约20分钟/样品）和费力的样品提取程序，其翻译到临床诊断通常受到限制。在这里，我们针对非目标代谢组学开发了一种分段流动方法，并结合了高分辨率质谱（SF-HRMS），该方法能够以不到1.5分钟/样品的速度采集数据，并且相对于LC-HRMS具有鲁棒性和可重复性。SF-HRMS结果证明了筛选与前列腺癌（PCa）相关的基于代谢物的泌尿生物标志物的能力。研究表明，基于SF-HRMS的全球代谢组学有可能发展成为用于临床研究的快速生物标志物筛选工具。