Earlier this week, senior graduate student, Dmitry Leontyev, had the opportunity to present at the Waters Imaging Innovation Summit where he presented his work on ‘Leveraging Collision Cross Sections and Machine Learning Predictions for Metabolite Identification’.
Good job, Dmitry! Keep making the lab proud!
This work lead by recent graduate of the Fernández Lab, Dr. Carter Asef, entitled “Beyond Targeted Newborn Screening: A Nontargeted Workflow to Investigate Birthweight-Metabolome Correlations”, was published in ACS affiliated journal, Analytical Chemistry. This work expands upon the traditional scope of the Recommended Uniform Screening newborn panel by leveraging the robust, non-targeted capabilities of HILIC LC-MS on dried bloodspot samples of a large patient cohort of 810 newborns. In addition to identifying correlations between newborn birth weight and metabolites typically included in the current newborn screening panel, new biomarkers and metabolic phenotypes were identified that were closely associated with parenteral nutrition administration and maternal nicotine exposure.
This work lead by current student, Alexandria Van Grouw, entitled “Toward Machine Learning Electrospray Ionization Sensitivity Prediction for Semiquantitative Lipidomics in Stem Cells”, was published in ACS affiliated journal, Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. This work addresses the challenges that arise from variability in electrospray ionization response when comparing multiple batches of both targeted and non-targeted mass spectrometry datasets. As patient recruitment is a long, arduous process among stem cell studies, this is batch-to-batch phenomenon is encountered frequently. In this publication, a machine learning model was developed that predicts electrospray ionization sensitivity for lipid classes that have shown correlation with stem cell potency to help bridge the gaps present between batches and between targeted and non-targeted datasets.
It’s with heavy hearts but also much excitement that we congratulate Dr. Xin Ma on his new role as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Virginia. Xin contributed so much to the expertise and community of the lab and will be greatly missed. We know this next adventure will hold both great accomplishments and challenges, but we could not be more confident in Xin and his abilities!
We’re so happy for you, Xin, and wish you all the best!
Jada Gray is the newest minted masters degree from the Fernández group! Congratulations again to Jada, and we wish you the best in all your future endeavors with Dr. Mijin Kim and her group. We know you’re going to be an amazing success.
This work lead by former Fernández lab member, Dr. Samyukta Sah, and current student, Elisabeth Schwiebert, entitled “Metabolomics of Papanicolaou Tests for the Discovery of Ovarian Cancer Biomarkers”, was published in metabolites. This work is the first, to our knowledge, to evaluate residual Papanicolaou (Pap) tests as a potential biospecimen for metabolomics and lipidomics studies. In this first-stage, feasibility study, we were able to detect and annotate numerous lipid species in all of our non-cancerous samples that we plan to compare to cancerous samples in future.
This work lead by Dmitry Leontyev entitled “Desorption Electrospray Ionization Cyclic Ion Mobility-Mass Spectrometry Imaging for Traumatic Brain Injury Spatial Metabolomics” published in Analytical Chemistry enabled the recognition of multiply charged phosphoinositide species that had previously not been reported in traumatic brain injury (TBI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) studies.
Several members of the Fernández lab traveled to Tampa, Florida, for the 2024 meeting of the Metabolomics Association of North America (MANA). Drs. Xin Ma and Olatomiwa Bifarin and graduate students, Elisabeth Schwiebert and Katherine Kenney, all had the opportunity to present their research projects.
Carter Asef is the newest Ph.D. graduate of the Fernández Lab! He recently defended his thesis, titled “Advanced Approaches for Metabolite Identification by Mass Spectrometry,” and we could not be more proud! He will be joining Andson Biotech as a field application scientist for the DynaCHIP platform, a device for automated sample purification ahead of mass spectrometry.
Congratulations again, Carter, and we can’t wait to see all that you accomplish in the future!
This work led in part by Alex Van Grouw entitled “Investigation of MSC potency metrics via integration of imaging modalities with lipidomic characterization” published in Cell Reports shows how the use of label-free differential phase contrast imaging and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI) aided in the identification of differences in lipid signatures in morphologically defined MSC subpopulations and of higher abundances of certain lipid classes involved in cellular immune functions.
