High-throughput screening of salivary polyamine markers for discrimination of colorectal cancer by multisegment injection capillary electrophoresis tandem mass spectrometry.

Polyamine metabolites provide pathophysiological information on disease or therapeutic efficacy, yet rapid screening methods for these biomarkers are lacking. Here, we developed high-throughput polyamine metabolite profiling based on multisegment injection capillary electrophoresis triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (MSI-CE-MS/MS), which allows sequential 40-sample injection followed by electrophoretic separation and specific mass detection. To achieve consecutive analysis of polyamine samples, 1 M formic acid was used as the background electrolyte (BGE).