Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Mass Spectrometry Research Center, Department of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University, 465 21st Avenue S. MRB III Suite 9160, Nashville, TN 37232, USA.
Trends Biotechnol. 2011 Mar;29(3):136-43. doi: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2010.12.002. Epub 2011 Feb 2.
The molecular complexity of biological tissue and the spatial and temporal variation in the biological processes involved in human disease requires new technologies and new approaches to provide insight into disease processes. Imaging mass spectrometry is an effective tool that provides molecular images of tissues in the molecular discovery process. The analysis of human tissue presents special challenges and limitations because the heterogeneity among human tissues and diseases is much greater than that observed in animal models, and discoveries made in animal tissues might not translate well to their human counterparts. In this article, we briefly review the challenges of imaging human tissue using mass spectrometry and suggest approaches to address these issues.
生物组织的分子复杂性以及涉及人类疾病的生物学过程的空间和时间变化，需要新技术和新方法来深入了解疾病过程。成像质谱技术是一种有效的工具，可在分子发现过程中提供组织的分子图像。分析人体组织具有特殊的挑战和局限性，因为人体组织和疾病之间的异质性比在动物模型中观察到的要大得多，而且在动物组织中发现的结果可能无法很好地转化为其对应的人体组织。在本文中，我们简要回顾了使用质谱技术对人体组织进行成像的挑战，并提出了解决这些问题的方法。
