Britt Lee   Britt Lee My experiences from my graduate work, postdoc and industry are all focused in the small molecule and multiomics space, specializing in metabolomics, lipidomics, and proteomics. Now at Thermo Fisher Scientific, I focus on developing applications that advance omics research using cutting-edge mass spectrometry technologies. My work aims to bridge the gap between emerging analytical tools and practical solutions for high-throughput, high-precision biomolecular analysis.

Lipidomics at Scale: Skyline-Powered Targeted Workflows on the Stellar Mass Spectrometer

The growing prevalence of metabolic disorders underscores the need for high-throughput lipidomics workflows that enable comprehensive, precise, and selective lipid quantification. Structurally related lipids with varying fatty acid compositions play distinct biological roles, making highly selective analysis essential for risk prediction, diagnostics, and translational research. Skyline provides a powerful and accessible platform for developing and optimizing targeted lipidomics methods, making it an ideal tool for nominal mass instruments like the Thermo Scientific Stellar MS. Read More
By integrating LipidCreator for targeted lipid library generation and PRM Conductor for streamlined parallel reaction monitoring (PRM) method setup, Skyline simplifies method development while ensuring efficient and reproducible data acquisition. Its intuitive data analysis tools further refine lipid quantification, allowing users to confidently analyze complex lipid panels with minimal manual intervention. To demonstrate this, we applied a Skyline-driven workflow to quantify over 1000 lipids in NIST 1950 plasma within a 12-minute acquisition on the Stellar MS. The integration of LipidCreator enabled the construction of an enhanced targeted list, incorporating multiple transitions per lipid species. This resulted in an average of 3.5 transitions per analyte, increasing lipid species diversity by 50% while improving peak definition and scan density by at least 20%. This work highlights Skyline’s role in advancing lipidomics, providing researchers with a flexible, scalable, and user-friendly solution for high-confidence lipid panel development. By leveraging automated method generation, streamlined PRM acquisition, and detailed data analysis, Skyline enables more efficient lipidomics research, enhancing quantitative reliability, specificity, and throughput for emerging mass spectrometry technologies.