Novel MALDI Imaging solution empowered by a timsTOF fleX and dedicated bioinformatics pipeline for identification of lipids from tissue

MALDI Imaging spectra can be used to investigate how compounds are localized across tissue samples. In this application note, we present a novel software workflow for the identification of signals using data from the high-speed, high spatial resolution timsTOF fleX instrument.

Introduction

Understanding the content and distribution of molecules in tissue and the changes that occur to them in disease is integral to enhancing our understanding of the tissue-based diseases, such as cancers and neurologicalbased conditions. MALDI Imaging is a powerful label-free technique that allows mapping of a wide range of molecules from tissue sections and is capable of detecting hundreds to thousands of unique compounds in a single sample. This allows the understanding of molecular distributions over entire samples or even to classify distinct regions of interest. We present a novel workflow solution for automatically annotating MALDI Imaging data from a timsTOF fleX, allowing subsequent generation of annotated images. In this application note, the workflow above is demonstrated on measurements of lipids from rat brain sections.