Lipidomic Profiling in a Large-Scale Cohort

Molecular profiling is utilized to understand phenotypic changes in individuals and for biomarker discovery in clinical studies. However, most samples for clinical examinations are obtained from patients and are not paired with samples from the optimal number of healthy individuals with corresponding biological information, such as age, gender, and body mass index. Therefore, a database that includes reference values of molecules, including lipid species, would be a crucial asset to such studies. Recently, national biobank projects have been established in several countries. Although most of these projects focus on genomic and epidemiologic studies, molecular profiling in biological samples has already been conducted. However, there are several bottlenecks in molecular profiling, notably that of lipid species, in the process from sample collection, preparation, and data analysis, particularly in large-scale studies. In this chapter, mass spectrometry-based lipidomic profiling and related key factors for a large-scale cohort study are described.