The Lipidomics/Metabolomics Facility offers the analysis of polar metabolites and lipids in biological samples using state-of-the-art mass spectrometric techniques and data processing software. The service also includes help with the experimental design and data interpretation.

In recent years, the Facility has focused on targeted quantifications of pre-defined sets of metabolites. The Facility is experienced in analyzing small metabolites from various model organisms and is able to handle a wide range of sample matrices such as cells, tissues, body fluids, and isolated cell organelles (e.g. mitochondria). The set of small biological molecules for which quantitative methods are available at the Facility includes all common lipid classes as well as polar metabolites, such as amino acids, acyl carnitines, nucleotides and metabolites of the central carbon metabolism.

Furthermore, the Facility offers a metabolic tracing workflow using isotope-labelled nutrients, such as ¹³C-glucose or ¹³C-palmitate, to trace the flow of these molecules within the glycolysis and the TCA cycle.

A broad semi-targeted metabolomics workflow for the detection and quantification of several hundreds of metabolites in a single run using an in-house library of metabolites is currently under development at the Facility.