A Polymer Coating Transfer Enrichment Method for Direct Mass Spectrometry Analysis of Lipids in Biofluid Samples

A porous polymer coating transfer enrichment method is developed for the direct mass spectrometry (MS) analysis of lipids. The enrichment is fast (ca. 1 min) and enables the profiling and quantitation of lipids in small-volume biofluid samples. Coupled with a photochemical Paternò–Büchi reaction, this method enables the fast determination of lipid structure at the C=C location level and point-of-care lipid biomarker analysis.

• This study develops a polymer coating transfer enrichment (PCTE) method enabling fast and highly efficient direct sampling of lipids from small-volume biofluids (e.g., blood, plasma) for direct MS analysis.
• Coupled with internal standard (IS) incorporation and photochemical C=C derivatization (Paternò-Büchi reaction), this method enables lipid profiling, relative or absolute quantitation, and detailed lipid structure identification at the C=C level.
• This method has been demonstrated for point-of-care biofluid lipid biomarker analysis, such as potential blood FA biomarker analysis for T2D.