Abstract #4021

Is the Metabolite Profile of a Single Muscle Biopsy Representative for the Tissue Under Investigation? a Reproducibility Study Using HR-MAS

Galle Diserens¹, Martina Vermathen², Nicholas Thomas Broskey³, Chris Boesch¹, Francesca Amati¹,³, Peter Vermathen¹

¹Depts. Clinical Research and Radiology, University Bern, Bern, Switzerland; ²Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University Bern, Bern, Switzerland; ³Dept. of Physiology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

High resolution magic angle spinning was used to study how far the metabolite profile of a single biopsy can be considered representative for the tissue under investigation, i.e. how much do metabolites from biopsies of the same tissue vary. Metabolite variability was tested for separate human muscle biopsies collected from the same needle puncture by HR-MAS. Same needle biopsies harvested from the same muscles demonstrated similarities but also some differences in the metabolites content as obtained from HR-MAS. Therefore, the variability needs to be taken into account as different type of muscle cells will lead to differences in spectra.