Characterization of blood serum and cell lines by an automated high-throughput well plate sampling system using laser ablation-rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry

We introduce a novel automated well plate sampling system (AmbiSampler) using laser ablation-rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (LA-REIMS) for label-free high-throughput biochemical screening for small volume biological fluid samples and cell line panels from multiwell plates. The human blood serum samples featured intensive signals in the low m/z range including fatty acids and metabolites and in the higher (m/z > 600) range associated with complex lipids, peptides, and proteins. We demonstrate the current quantification performance of the system through blood serum samples spiked with labelled amino acid mix. Cell line analysis was demonstrated by analyzing the NCI60 human cell lines panel grown in multiwell plates. Without any sample preparation, these experiments yielded rich metabolic and lipidomic mass spectrometry profiles, with classification results showing a 98.7% correct classification rate. We demonstrated that the new high-throughput setup using LA-REIMS technology provides an efficient and versatile approach for ambient ionization mass spectrometric analysis of various biological samples in a high-throughput manner.