Lipid Mediator Scan or MSCAN is a targeted 400 Lipid Mediators Panel using LC/MS/MS for specificity. Lipid mediators consist of many unsaturated, hydroxylated lipids that exist in nature as isomers. MSCAN uses the combination of HPLC separation optimization with MS/MS to measure unique lipid species of which many are linked to inflammatory and immune pathways. These bioactive lipids are called lipid mediators.
MSCAN is an unique panel consisting of a panel of bioactive lipid mediators associated with inflammatory, immune and metabolic disease, hence MSCAN is often used with OMEGA Scan for biomarker discovery in animal and human plasma. Since MSCAN contains many long and very long fatty acids, acyl carnitines and OMEGA fatty acids, MSCAN can also be used to determine lipid content in meat cells and plant / algae extracts. For human plasma, we have created a virtual human plasma dataset that can be used for quality control and for disease comparisons as a reference list. Since many of these lipids are associated with disease or an inflammatory state, this reference list can act as a comparator for biomarker discovery. For a more complete lipid survey, MSCAN can be combined with LC-OMEGA since these two platforms have a minimum of overlap, coverage is expanded with used together. For the discovery of plasma biomarkers, OMEGA Scan, LC-OMEGA and MSCAN can be combined to deliver a list of over 1000 annotated metabolites in human plasma. Such a combination can also be used to inventory or discover the composition of plant, algae, berry, fruit or fermentation products to cover the large diversity of metabolites in natural products and in plasma/serum.