Innovation Center for Medical Redox Navigation, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan.
Innovation Center for Medical Redox Navigation, Kyushu University, 3-1-1 Maidashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka 812-8582, Japan.
J Proteomics. 2012 Aug 30;75(16):5052-5060. doi: 10.1016/j.jprot.2012.02.011. Epub 2012 Feb 16.
MS imaging (MSI) is a remarkable new technology that enables us to determine the distribution of biological molecules present in tissue sections by direct ionization and detection. This technique is now widely used for in situ imaging of endogenous or exogenous molecules such as proteins, lipids, drugs and their metabolites, and it is a potential tool for pathological analysis and the investigation of disease mechanisms. MSI is also thought to be a technique that could be used for biomarker discovery with spatial information. The application of MSI to the study of endogenous metabolites has received considerable attention because metabolites are the result of the interactions of a system's genome with its environment and a total set of these metabolites more closely represents the phenotype of an organism under a given set of conditions. Recent studies have suggested the importance of in situ metabolite imaging in biological discovery and biomedical applications, but several issues regarding the technical application limits of MSI still remained to be resolved. In this review, we describe the capabilities of the latest MSI techniques for the imaging of endogenous metabolites in biological samples, and also discuss the technical problems and new challenges that need to be addressed for effective and widespread application of MSI in both preclinical and clinical settings.
磁共振成像（MSI）是一项卓越的新技术，通过直接离子化和检测，使我们能够确定组织切片中存在的生物分子的分布。该技术现在广泛用于内源性或外源性分子（如蛋白质、脂质、药物及其代谢物）的原位成像，是病理分析和疾病机制研究的潜在工具。MSI 也被认为是一种具有空间信息的生物标志物发现技术。MSI 在内源性代谢物研究中的应用受到了广泛关注，因为代谢物是系统基因组与其环境相互作用的结果，而一套完整的代谢物更能代表给定条件下生物体的表型。最近的研究表明，原位代谢物成像在生物发现和生物医学应用中的重要性，但 MSI 的技术应用限制仍存在一些问题有待解决。在这篇综述中，我们描述了最新 MSI 技术对生物样本中内源性代谢物成像的能力，并讨论了在临床前和临床环境中有效和广泛应用 MSI 所需解决的技术问题和新挑战。
