2019 Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 1-7
A variety of efforts to clarify various life aspects at the single cell level have been performed in recent years, in particular with the aim of characterizing rare cells or observing of heterogeneity among similar cells in a qualitative and quantitative manner. To achieve such purposes, it is necessary to analyze various molecules in a comprehensive and sensitive manner, in which mass spectrometry-based analyses could be one of the most effective methods for such purposes. Here we focus on single-cell metabolome analysis using mass spectrometry and introduce what kind of technology is being developed. Especially we focus on Live Single-Cell Mass Spectrometry (LSC-MS), which has been developed to be specialized in single cell observation in an intuitive way. We introduce two latest achievements using this method, characterization of circulating tumor cell as an example to rare cells and evaluation of pharmacokinetic heterogeneity between cells in a combination with Raman spectroscopy as an example of heterogeneity observation.
