METHODS FOR CALIBRATED ION MOBILITY ANALYSIS AND USES THEREOF

摘要

The present invention relates to improved ion mobility analysis (IMA) methods that can accurately quantify particle concentration in a sample solution. Specifically, reference particles of known solution-phase concentration are used for calibration. In addition, by exploiting spectral deconvolution techniques, the concentrations of subpopulations within the particles can also be accurately quantified. The improved IMA methods permit, for the first time, the quantification of absolute concentrations of HDL particles and subpopulations thereof in a biological sample. The correlations of HDL particle concentrations and conditions such as LCAT deficiency and cardiovascular diseases have been established. Accordingly, the present invention also provide methods to determine whether a subject is at risk to develop or is suffering from these conditions by using HDL particle concentration as a clinical metric.

主权项

1. A method of characterizing particles in a sample solution, the method comprising:
(i) converting a portion of the particles in the sample solution into gas-phase ions; (ii) performing an ion mobility measurement on the gas-phase ions, whereby the gas-phase ions are enumerated according to size, thereby producing data relating particle size to relative abundance; (iii) processing the data by using a calibration regression, wherein the calibration regression is obtained by:
(a) performing steps (i) and (ii) on reference particles of known solution-phase concentration; and(b) constructing the regression relating total number of enumerated gas-phase ions of the reference particles to the known solution-phase concentration; and (iv) quantitatively determining particle concentration in the sample solution based on the processing.