A Novel Benchtop Time-of-Flight GC-MS System for High Performance Analysis of Human Urine

The development of improved profiling workflows are critical for effective investigation of environmental exposure and its relationship to chronic diseases. Metabolomic methods are particularly useful in this endeavor due to the proximity of metabolites to system phenotype, and their relatively quick insight into system perturbations from diet, drugs, gut microbiota, etc. (Figure 1). Unfortunately, a major problem with these methods continues to be incomplete sample characterization due to metabolite diversity, wide concentration range, and the overall complexity of biological matrices.

Urine is an ideal bio-fluid for studying the effects of exposure, since it is easy to obtain in large volumes, and is relatively free from interfering proteins and lipids. In addition, high concentrations of drugs and other xenobiotic materials can be detected over extended periods of time. In this study, we used a high performance, benchtop gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometer for comprehensive characterization of derivatized urine samples (Figure 2).