New mass spectrometric tools in brain research

BrainMet (Bioimaging of Metals in Brain and Metallomics) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, provides mass spectrometric technology that enables quantitative imaging of metal distributions in brain tissue slices in combination with other medical imaging techniques (such as histochemistry, immunostaining, positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance tomography, and autoradiography).The aim of this article is to demonstrate the capability of established BrainMet techniques by investigating thin cryosections of native rat brain and to illustrate the benefits of analytical strategies with examples of tumor, stroke and haematoma in rat brain.The development and future trends in novel mass spectrometric instrumentation of two different laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) techniques with spatial resolution at the low μm and nm scale are discussed:(1)using the near-field effect on the thin tip of a thin silver needle; and(2)coupling a laser microdissection apparatus to ICP-MS.Both these nanotechniques provide improved spatial resolution for the detection of essential and toxic metals in small sample sizes, so that new structural information about the metallo-architecture of diseased brain compared to control brain can be obtained down to the single cell level.