Comprehensive LESA Mass Spectrometry Imaging of Intact Proteins by Integration of Cylindrical FAIMS

The benefits of high field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) for mass spectrometry imaging of intact proteins in thin tissue sections have been demonstrated previously. In those works, a planar FAIMS device coupled with a Thermo Elite mass spectrometer was employed. Here, we have evaluated a newly introduced cylindrical FAIMS device (the FAIMS Pro) coupled with a Thermo Fusion Lumos mass spectrometer for liquid extraction surface analysis mass spectrometry imaging of intact proteins in thin tissue sections from rat testes, kidney, and brain. The method makes use of multiple FAIMS compensation values at each location (pixel) of the imaging array. A total of 975 nonredundant protein species were detected in the testes imaging dataset, 981 in the kidney dataset, and 249 in the brain dataset. These numbers represent a 7-fold (brain) and over 10-fold (testes, kidney) improvement on the numbers of proteins previously detected in LESA FAIMS imaging, and a 10-fold to over 20-fold improvement on the numbers detected without FAIMS on this higher performance mass spectrometer, approaching the same order of magnitude as those obtained in top-down proteomics of cell lines. Nevertheless, high throughput identification within the LESA FAIMS imaging workflow remains a challenge.