RATIONALE: Mass spectrometry imaging has proven to be a complementary assay to the traditional labeled-compound studies employed in drug research and development. However, there has been limited examination of the technical limitations of the technique with respect to small molecule stability in samples. METHODS: Raclopride dosed rat brain tissue sections (single dose i.v. 2 mg/kg) were allowed to warm to room temperature for 0 to 5 min prior to either a solvent-based wet matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) matrix or a solvent-free dry MALDI matrix being applied. Subsequent MS imaging analysis was at a spatial resolution of 200 µm, performed using a MALDI TOF/TOF (Ultraflex II, Bruker Daltonics). RESULTS: MALDI-MS has been used to monitor the time-dependent appearance and loss of small molecule abundance in tissue sections brought rapidly to room temperature for short periods of time. The abundances of a range of markers were seen to vary across the time course, both increasing and decreasing. The intensity of some markers changed significantly within 1 min. Importantly, the abundance of raclopride was seen to decrease over the 5-min time period examined. CONCLUSIONS: The results strongly indicate that considerable care is required to allow comparison of both pharmaceutical and endogenous compounds between MALDI-MSI experiments and also has implications for the standard practice of thaw-mounting multiple tissue sections onto MALDI-MS targets during MSI experiments.
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Goodwin et al. (2012) studied this question.