Data Independent Acquisition LC-MS/MS for drug metabolism and metabolomics (#20)
While the goal of drug metabolism is to characterize and quantify the biotransformation products of pharmaceuticals, in metabolomics, the challenge is to identify and to quantify endogenous metabolites representative of a biological state. Both fields are applying various liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques and for animal and human studies urine and blood are the most investigated biological matrices. Therefore, to analyze in the same samples phase I and II metabolites and endogenous metabolites which could serve as efficacy and safety markers is of interest. As many of the analytes can have the same molecular weight or m/z chromatographic separation efficiency and selectivity performance plays still an important role. From a mass spectrometric viewpoint several factors have to be considered such as the chromatographic peak width and the dynamic range of the analytes. For structural characterization high resolution tandem mass spectrometry is gaining of importance. Data Dependent Acquisition (DDA) is largely used but it suffers from the fact that for many precursors, no MS/MS are generated. As an alternative Data Independent Acquisition (DIA) have been developed such as MSeverything (MSE or MSALL). In the present work we applied a DIA mode on a quadrupole-time of flight instrument (QqTOF) based on multiple precursor ion windows, denoted sequential window acquisition of all theoretical fragments (SWATH) for the analysis of rat urine after administration of vinpocetine. The SWATH approach was applied to identify and to perform relative quantification of vinpocetine metabolites and various endogenous metabolites. Furthermore, differential ion mobility spectrometry (DMS) was used as an additional separation dimension and applied for the same samples using MSALL acquisition mode.