Development and Application of Software Tools for Mass Spectrometry Imaging

Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) has been extensively used to produce qualitative maps of distributions of proteins, peptides, lipids, neurotransmitters, small molecule pharmaceuticals and their metabolites directly in biological tissue sections. Moreover, during the last 10 years, there has been growing demand to quantify target compounds in tissue sections of various organs. This thesis focuses on development and application of a novel instrument- and manufacturer-independent MSI software suite, msIQuant, in the open access format imzML, which has been developed specifically for quantitative analysis of MSI data. The functionality of msIQuant facilitates automatic generation of calibration curves from series of standards that can be used to determine concentrations of specific analytes. In addition, it provides many tools for image visualization, including modules enabling multiple interpolation, low intensity transparency display, and image fusion and sharpening. Moreover, algorithms and advanced data management modules in msIQuant facilitate management of the large datasets generated following rapid recent increases in the mass and spatial resolutions of MSI instruments, by using spectra transposition and data entropy reduction (at four selectable levels: coarse, medium, fine or superfine) before lossless compression of the data. As described in the thesis, implementation of msIQuant has been exemplified in both quantitative (relative or absolute) and qualitative analyses of distributions of neurotransmitters, endogenous substances and pharmaceutical drugs in brain tissue sections. Our laboratory have developed a molecular-specific approach for the simultaneous imaging and quantitation of multiple neurotransmitters, precursors, and metabolites, such as tyrosine, tryptamine, tyramine, phenethylamine, dopamine, 3-methoxytyramine, serotonin, gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), and acetylcholine, in histological tissue sections at high spatial resolution by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) and desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) MSI. Chemical derivatization by charge-tagging primary amines of analytes significantly increased the sensitivity, enabling mapping of neurotransmitters that were not previously detectable by MSI. The two MSI approaches have been used to directly measure changes in neurotransmitter levels in specific brain structures in animal disease models, which facilitates understanding of biochemical mechanisms of drug treatments. In summary, msIQuant software has proven potency (particularly in combination with the reported derivatization technique) for both qualitative and quantitative analyses. Further developments will enable its implementation in multiple operating system platforms and use for statistical analysis