Analisi Lipidomiche mediante Tecniche Cromatografiche Accoppiate alla Spettrometria di Massa per la Valutazione dello Stato di Salute dei Pazienti

The study of all lipids in a biological system, known as lipidome, is defined with the term “lipidomics, and it has assumed between the scientists considerable importance and attention in the last decades. Lipid samples from biological matrices are complex mixtures that require the use of appropriate sample treatments and chromatographic techniques for the separation of targeted and untargeted species in order to provide accurate identification and quantification. Lipids in their native form are usually analyzed by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). However, lipid compounds can also be studied in term of fatty acids, previous their conversion in specific derivatives, using gas chromatography techniques (GC). Almost all the techniques of chromatography involve the employment of the mass spectrometry (MS) due to the recent advances in this field and different types of instruments available on the market. The present PhD. thesis is placed into the lipidomics context, and it has consisted in the development of rapid, greener, and alternative analytical techniques, and improvement of the established methods, for the characterization of complex lipid matrices. In detail, my research consisted in the development of a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) strategy to produce oil from vegetable seeds such as Opuntia ficus-indica seeds. In addition, the research provided the optimization of a fast GC tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) under milder electron ionization conditions for the monitoring of vitamin D levels in human serum, as alternative procedure to conventional HPLC methods, Finally, a rapid and practicable fast GC-MS technique was developed for the measurement of short-chain fatty acids, including acetic, propionic, and butyric acids, in human plasma.