Analytical Sciences

Direct Lipido-Metabolomics of Single Floating Cells for Analysis of Circulating Tumor Cells by Live Single-cell Mass Spectrometry

Eiso HIYAMA,* Ahmed ALI,**,*** Sara AMER,**,*** Takanori HARADA,* Kazumi SHIMAMOTO,* Rie FURUSHIMA,*** Yasmine ABOULEILA,**,*** Samy EMARA,** and Tsutomu MASUJIMA***

*Natural Science Center for Basic Research and Development, Hiroshima University, 1-2-3, Kasumi, Minami, Hiroshima 734-8551, Japan
**Faculty of Pharmacy, Misr International University, Km28 Ismailia Road, Cairo, Egypt
***Quantitative Biology Center (QBiC), RIKEN, 6-2-3 Furuedai, Suita, Osaka 565-0874, Japan

Direct trapping of a single floating cell, i.e. a white blood cell from a drop of blood, within a nanospray tip was followed by super-sonication after the addition of ionization solvent. Molecular detection of an increased number of peaks with a higher intensity and a wider m/z range, which extends from metabolites to lipids, was acquired than of that without sonication. This method was applied to a few separated circulating tumor cells (CTC) from a neuroblastoma patient’s blood to obtain their lipido-metabolomic molecular profile at the single cell level. In addition to vital molecules such as amino acids, catechol amine metabolites, which are specific to neuroblastoma, and drugs included in the patient’s course of therapy were detected. This established “direct single-cell lipido-metabolomic method” seems to be useful for direct and wide range molecular detection not only for many live single-cells, but also for rare cells, such as CTCs, for future molecular diagnosis.

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