MALDI Profiling and Applications in Medicine.

Matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry allows for the rapid profiling of different biomolecular species from both biofluids and tissues. Whilst originally focused upon the analysis of intact proteins and peptides, MALDI mass spectrometry has found further applications in lipidomic analysis, genotyping, microorganism identification, biomarker discovery and metabolomics. The combining of multiple profiles data from differing locations across a sample furthermore, allows for spatial distribution of biomolecules to be established utilizing imaging MALDI analysis. This chapter discusses the MALDI process, its usual applications in the field of protein identification via peptide mass fingerprinting before focusing upon advances in the application of the profiling potential of MALDI mass spectrometry and its' various applications in biomedicine.