Shared Resources Core: Ferroptosis Biomarkers and Lipidomic Analysis

Project Summary Cancer resistance to ferroptosis is often mediated through changes in lipid abundance. Moreover, during ferroptosis, specific lipids undergo oxidation. Despite the critical importance of lipids in ferroptosis, it is challenging to assess the abundance and spatial distribution of lipids. Moreover, assessing the presence of biomarkers of ferroptosis is critical, but it can be challenging to find reliable reagents and conditions for marker detection. Hence, this technical core will provide bulk and spatial lipidomics capabilities and ferroptosis biomarker detection capabilities. The core will use DESI-MSI and UPLC-MS/MS for detecting and imaging lipids in human and mouse samples, and qPCR, western blots and fluorescent reagents for detecting ferroptosis markers. The core’s workflow uses consecutive sections for analysis of fresh frozen tissue by histological staining, DESI MS imaging, and UPLC-MS/MS. Additional sections can be generated for complementary analyses, including bulk and scRNA sequencing, proteomics, and immunostaining of markers. The core has a leadership team with experience running cores and performing lipidomics and ferroptosis assays, ensuring high quality service to the program project. The mission of the core is to support the three research projects in the program project grant by enabling them to perform bulk and spatial lipidomics and standardized, rigorous ferroptosis marker assays. Each project will be able to easily access the data, protocols, and analyses used for other projects. The core will provide innovative experimental design, methods, analysis and data integration workflows. Together, these will allow the projects to easily and rigorously assess the lipids and markers of ferroptosis relevant to their goals. These services will allow the core to provide standardized, state-of-the-art services for key markers related to ferroptosis in a uniform, robust, and unbiased manner through the entire program project.