Comprehensive two‐dimensional gas chromatographic platforms comparison for exhaled breath metabolites analysis

Abstract

The high potential of exhaled breath for disease diagnosis has been highlighted in numerous studies. However, exhaled breath analysis is suffering from a lack of standardized sampling and analysis procedures, impacting the robustness of inter-laboratory results, and thus hampering proper external validation. The aim of this work was to verify compliance and validate the performance of two different comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry platforms in different laboratories by monitoring probe metabolites in exhaled breath following the Peppermint Initiative guidelines. An initial assessment of the exhaled breath sampling conditions was performed, selecting the most suitable sampling bag material and volume. Then, a single sampling was performed using Tedlar bags, followed by the trapping of the volatile organic compounds into thermal desorption tubes for the subsequent analysis using two different analytical platforms. The thermal desorption tubes were first analyzed by a (cryogenically modulated) comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography system coupled to high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The desorption was performed in split mode and the split part was recollected in the same tube and further analyzed by a different (flow modulated) comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography system with a parallel detection, specifically using a quadrupole mass spectrometer and a vacuum ultraviolet detector. Both the comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography platforms enabled the longitudinal tracking of the peppermint oil metabolites in exhaled breath. The increased sensitivity of comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography enabled to successfully monitor over a 6.5 h period a total of 10

A Look into Ocular Diseases: The Pivotal Role of Omics Sciences in Ophthalmology Research

“…Despite the very high resolution provided by state-of-the-art chromatographic methods, the separation of all the metabolites present in a sample by means of chromatography coupled to MS is very challenging due to their chemical diversity as well as their different concentrations. Volatile biomolecules, such as those required for breath analysis, 29 are well separated by means of gas chromatography (GC) coupled to MS; however, the largest part of metabolites (as well as proteins/peptides) are nonvolatile, and therefore, they could be analyzed through GC only prior derivatization. This is the reason why (U)HPLC-MS is considered to be the most versatile separation technique to identify proteins and metabolites (including lipids), especially in tandem mode (MS/MS).…”

Comprehensive two‐dimensional gas chromatography— A discussion on recent innovations

“…Such setups capitalize on the quantitative capabilities of the FID and combine this with the qualitative strengths of MS. Bauwens et al [102] coupled a liquid-chromatographic (LC) preseparation online with GC × GC with dual detection, resulting in a powerful LC-GC × GC-FID/MS platform. Zanella et al [103] described a GC × GC platform with parallel MS and vacuum UV (VUV) detectors. This combination offers exciting prospects for the identification of isomeric compounds.…”

“…Zanella et al. [103] described a GC × GC platform with parallel MS and vacuum UV (VUV) detectors. This combination offers exciting prospects for the identification of isomeric compounds.…”

A miniaturized comprehensive approach for total lipidome analysis and vitamin D metabolite quantification in human serum

“…The FA profile is commonly investigated by using gas chromatography (GC) techniques, after a derivatization procedure, following lipid extraction [2]. However, nowadays, the use of multidimensional chromatographic techniques is increasingly used, even for routine analysis in clinical study, especially, employing flow modulators characterized by robustness and reduced economical costs [27,28].…”