Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

The adoption of mass spectrometry for high-throughput screening in drug discovery has become increasingly prevalent and has enabled label-free screening against diverse targets. Cellular assays for phenotypic screening, however, are primarily conducted by microscopy as there remain many challenges a...

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Main Authors: Alena N. Joignant, Fan Pu, Shaun M. McLoughlin, James W. Sawicki, Andrew J. Radosevich, Renze Ma, Jon D. Williams, Sujatha M. Gopalakrishnan, Nathaniel L. Elsen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2025-06-01
Series:SLAS Technology
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Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2472630325000305
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author Alena N. Joignant
Fan Pu
Shaun M. McLoughlin
James W. Sawicki
Andrew J. Radosevich
Renze Ma
Jon D. Williams
Sujatha M. Gopalakrishnan
Nathaniel L. Elsen
author_facet Alena N. Joignant
Fan Pu
Shaun M. McLoughlin
James W. Sawicki
Andrew J. Radosevich
Renze Ma
Jon D. Williams
Sujatha M. Gopalakrishnan
Nathaniel L. Elsen
author_sort Alena N. Joignant
collection DOAJ
description The adoption of mass spectrometry for high-throughput screening in drug discovery has become increasingly prevalent and has enabled label-free screening against diverse targets. Cellular assays for phenotypic screening, however, are primarily conducted by microscopy as there remain many challenges associated with conducting phenotypic screens via ultra-high throughput mass spectrometry.Following a simple on-plate extraction, infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization (IR-MALDESI) was employed to directly sample the cell lysate at a speed of one sample per second with high mass resolution. A549 cells were treated with compounds identified as hits in literature, including a recently reported glutaminase cellular screen. Among the test compounds were confirmed glutaminase inhibitors, proposed nuisance compounds, and cell-active but enzyme-inactive compounds. Filtered data were further processed in R for dimensionality reduction and unsupervised clustering. The general nature of dimensionality reduction enables the immediate use of this method in applications other than glutaminase inhibition.Though we observed that all compounds affected the intracellular conversion of glutamine to glutamate, there were clear metabolic differences between the biochemically active compounds and the off-target false hits. Moreover, two nuisance compounds were observed to cluster separately from the confirmed glutaminase inhibitors in the observed metabolite fingerprints.This proof-of-concept work establishes a workflow that enables high-throughput mass spectrometry-based phenotypic screening. The methods proposed herein, at the throughput enabled by IR-MALDESI, could offer a new avenue for the discovery of novel drugs.
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spelling doaj-art-3a59316846bf44fc9810cf958f12ffb02025-08-20T02:54:11ZengElsevierSLAS Technology2472-63032025-06-013210027210.1016/j.slast.2025.100272Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometryAlena N. Joignant0Fan Pu1Shaun M. McLoughlin2James W. Sawicki3Andrew J. Radosevich4Renze Ma5Jon D. Williams6Sujatha M. Gopalakrishnan7Nathaniel L. Elsen8Discovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesDiscovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesCorresponding author at: Discovery Research, AbbVie Inc.; Discovery Research, AbbVie Inc., 1 North Waukegan Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, United StatesThe adoption of mass spectrometry for high-throughput screening in drug discovery has become increasingly prevalent and has enabled label-free screening against diverse targets. Cellular assays for phenotypic screening, however, are primarily conducted by microscopy as there remain many challenges associated with conducting phenotypic screens via ultra-high throughput mass spectrometry.Following a simple on-plate extraction, infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization (IR-MALDESI) was employed to directly sample the cell lysate at a speed of one sample per second with high mass resolution. A549 cells were treated with compounds identified as hits in literature, including a recently reported glutaminase cellular screen. Among the test compounds were confirmed glutaminase inhibitors, proposed nuisance compounds, and cell-active but enzyme-inactive compounds. Filtered data were further processed in R for dimensionality reduction and unsupervised clustering. The general nature of dimensionality reduction enables the immediate use of this method in applications other than glutaminase inhibition.Though we observed that all compounds affected the intracellular conversion of glutamine to glutamate, there were clear metabolic differences between the biochemically active compounds and the off-target false hits. Moreover, two nuisance compounds were observed to cluster separately from the confirmed glutaminase inhibitors in the observed metabolite fingerprints.This proof-of-concept work establishes a workflow that enables high-throughput mass spectrometry-based phenotypic screening. The methods proposed herein, at the throughput enabled by IR-MALDESI, could offer a new avenue for the discovery of novel drugs.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2472630325000305IR-MALDESIPhenotypic screeningDrug discoveryCell-based assayGlutaminaseMass spectrometry
spellingShingle Alena N. Joignant
Fan Pu
Shaun M. McLoughlin
James W. Sawicki
Andrew J. Radosevich
Renze Ma
Jon D. Williams
Sujatha M. Gopalakrishnan
Nathaniel L. Elsen
Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
SLAS Technology
IR-MALDESI
Phenotypic screening
Drug discovery
Cell-based assay
Glutaminase
Mass spectrometry
title Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
title_full Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
title_fullStr Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
title_full_unstemmed Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
title_short Metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix-assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
title_sort metabolite fingerprinting by infrared matrix assisted laser desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry
topic IR-MALDESI
Phenotypic screening
Drug discovery
Cell-based assay
Glutaminase
Mass spectrometry
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2472630325000305
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