MALDI Profiling and Applications in Medicine

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation (MALDI) mass spectrometry allows for the rapid profiling of different biomolecular species from both biofluids and tissues. Whilst originally focussed upon the analysis of intact proteins and peptides, MALDI mass spectrometry has found further applications in lipidomic analysis, genotyping, micro-organism identification, biomarker discovery and metabolomics. The combining of multiple profiles data from differing locations across a sample, furthermore, allows for spatial distribution of biomolecules to be established utilising imaging MALDI analysis. This chapter discusses the MALDI process, its usual applications in the field of protein identification via peptide mass fingerprinting before focusing upon advances in the application of the profiling potential of MALDI mass spectrometry and its various applications in biomedicine.