Preparation of Human Tissues Embedded in Optimal Cutting Temperature Compound for Mass Spectrometry AnalysisApril E. Boyd 1, Jeremy Allegood 2, Santiago Lima 1,3
1Department of Biology, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2VCU Lipidomics/Metabolomics Shared Resource, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, 3Massey Cancer Center
Sphingolipids are bioactive metabolites with well-established roles in human disease. Characterizing alterations in tissues with mass-spectrometry can reveal roles in disease etiology or identify therapeutic targets. However, the OCT-compound used for cryopreservation in biorepositories interferes with mass-spectrometry. We outline methods to analyze sphingolipids in human tissues embedded in OCT with LC-ESI-MS/MS.