Differential ion mobility spectrometry coupled to tandem mass spectrometry enables targeted leukemia antigen detection

Differential ion mobility spectrometry (DIMS) can be used as a filter to remove undesired background ions from reaching the mass spectrometer. The ability to use DIMS as a filter for known analytes makes DIMS coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (DIMS-MS/MS) a promising technique for the detection of cancer antigens that can be predicted by computational algorithms. In experiments using DIMS-MS/MS that were performed without the use of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a predicted model antigen, GLR (FLSSANEHL), was detected at a concentration of 10 pM (20 amol) in a mixture containing 94 competing model peptide antigens, each at a concentration of 1 μM. Without DIMS filtering, the GLR peptide was undetectable in the mixture even at 100 nM. Again, without using HPLC, DIMS-MS/MS was used to detect 2 of 3 previously characterized antigens produced by the leukemia cell line U937.A2. Because of its sensitivity, a targeted DIMS-MS/MS methodology can likely be used to probe for predicted cancer antigens from cancer cell lines as well as human tumor samples.