High throughput volatile fatty acid skin metabolite profiling by thermal desorption secondary electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry

Helen J. Martin,a James C. Reynolds,a Svetlana Riazanskaiab and C. L. Paul Thomas*a

The non-invasive nature of volatile organic compound (VOC) sampling from skin makes this a priority in the development of new screening and diagnostic assays. Evaluation of recent literature highlights the tension between the analytical utility of ambient ionisation approaches for skin profiling and the practicality of undertaking larger campaigns (higher statistical power), or undertaking research in remote locations. This study describes how VOC may be sampled from skin and recovered from a polydimethylsilicone sampling coupon and analysed by thermal desorption (TD) interfaced to secondary electrospray ionisation (SESI) time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MS) for the high throughput screening of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from human skin…