MALDI Mass Spectrometry: From Principles to Expanding Clinical Applications
MALDI-MS offers high throughput, robustness, rapid analysis, and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional clinical techniques that measure secondary signals rather than analytes directly. While already established for microbial identification, the technology has significant untapped potential in disease diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic drug monitoring, and tissue imaging. This review covers MALDI principles, current clinical implementations, and the pathway toward broader adoption in routine diagnostic laboratories.
The original study
Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS): basics and clinical applications.
- Authors
- Israr MZ, Bernieh D, Salzano A, Cassambai S, Yazaki Y, Suzuki T
- Journal
- Clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine
- Type
- Journal Article, Review
- PMID
- 32229653
Original abstract
Background Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI) mass spectrometry (MS) has been used for more than 30 years. Compared with other analytical techniques, it offers ease of use, high throughput, robustness, cost-effectiveness, rapid analysis and sensitivity. As advantages, current clinical techniques (e.g. immunoassays) are unable to directly measure the biomarker; rather, they measure secondary signals. MALDI-MS has been extensively researched for clinical applications, and it is set for a breakthrough as a routine tool for clinical diagnostics. Content This review reports on the principles of MALDI-MS and discusses current clinical applications and the future clinical prospects for MALDI-MS. Furthermore, the review assesses the limitations currently experienced in clinical assays, the advantages and the impact of MALDI-MS to transform clinical laboratories. Summary MALDI-MS is widely used in clinical microbiology for the screening of microbial isolates; however, there is scope to apply MALDI-MS in the diagnosis, prognosis, therapeutic drug monitoring and biopsy imaging in many diseases. Outlook There is considerable potential for MALDI-MS in clinic as a tool for screening, profiling and imaging because of its high sensitivity and specificity over alternative techniques.