Mass spectrometric analysis of vitamin D metabolites

The goal of the vitamin D research in the Volmer group is the development of novel mass spectrometric techniques to provide detailed insight into the vitamin D metabolome. Vitamin D comprises a group of secosteroidal compounds, of which vitamin D3 is the most important bioactive variant. Vitamin D plays a crucial role in bone health but has also been linked to many other diseases such as cancer and chronic liver diseases.

Current clinical assays often lack specificity and accuracy, therefore MS-based techniques are preferred today. The research group has established several novel MS-based for vitamin D metabolites; they have also developed powerful chemical derivatization tools that increase both sensitivity and specificity of analysis, thus permitting quantitative measurement of multiple vitamin D metabolites from sera of patients.

This webinar provides an overview of the mass spectral analysis of vitamin D and its metabolites. Most activities in the vitamin D analytical field today center around clinical measurements and emphasis in the talk is therefore placed on vitamin D in human samples. Virtually all modern mass spectrometry analyses of vitamin D are performed using hyphenated liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) techniques.

The presentation starts with a short introduction to vitamin D photosynthesis and metabolism in humans, and abundances of vitamin D metabolites in human samples, followed by a discussion of accuracy issues related to vitamin D measurements, in particular those concerning mass spectrometry. Next, interferences in the mass spectrometric analysis of vitamin D are illustrated and a technique based on ion mobility spectrometry is shown that circumvents these. One particular interference of interest is an epimeric form of vitamin D and its detailed characterization is highlighted in detail. The talk concludes with a discussion on functional markers for vitamin D, which are obtained from measurement of vitamin D metabolic fingerprints.

Who should attend this webinar?

• This presentation is intended for all researchers who are interested in mass spectrometry, metabolomics, and the field of bioanalytics in general.

Presenter: Prof. Dr. Dietrich A. Volmer (Professor and Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany)

Dietrich Volmer is Full Professor and Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He graduated with a PhD in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Hannover in 1994, under the supervision of Karsten Levsen.

After postdoctoral research as ORISE Fellow at the National Center for Toxicological Research in Jefferson, AR/USA, he joined the National Research Council's Institute for Marine Biosciences in Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada in 1996 as a research associate.

He then spent a few years as Head of the Analytical Research Facility at Merck in Darmstadt, Germany, and subsequently returned to Canada in 2001, as Senior Research Officer and Group Leader Biological Mass Spectrometry at the Institute for Marine Biosciences in Halifax.

In 2007, Dietrich Volmer accepted a position as Head of the Department Bioanalytical Sciences of the Medical Research Council's Human Nutrition Research Institute in Cambridge, UK. He became Krupp Professor and Chair in Analytical Chemistry, and Director of the Institute of Bioanalytical Chemistry, at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany in 2010, until he moved to his current position in Berlin in 2018.