Molecular Imaging of Endometriosis Tissues using Desorption Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry

Clara L Feider, Spencer Woody, Suzanne Ledet, Jialing Zhang, Katherine Sebastian, Michael Breen, Michael T Breen, Livia S Eberlin, Lívia S. Eberlin
Scientific reports · 2019 · vol. 9(1) , pp. 15690 · doi:10.1038/s41598-019-51853-y · PMID:31666535 · W2982503462
article OA: gold CC0 ⤵ 11 in-corpus citations
📄 Open PDF View on OpenAlex View on PubMed View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

Desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging characterized molecular profiles of endometriosis tissues, enabling accurate classification and identification of altered fatty acids and glycerophosphoserines in ectopic lesions.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

⚙ AI-generated deep summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-07 ⓘ

The study used desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) mass spectrometry imaging to chemically and spatially profile 231 eutopic and ectopic endometrial tissue samples collected from 89 women undergoing endometriosis resection surgery, mapping molecular distributions onto tissue sections. Across endometriosis lesions versus eutopic endometrium, DESI-MS visualized glandular and stromal regions and enabled classification of lesions with high accuracy (89.4% training, 98.4% validation, 98.8% test), while identifying metabolites and lipid species—including altered fatty acids and glycerophosphoserines such as PS 18:1_18:0—as significantly different in ectopic tissues. A major caveat is that no patient exclusions were applied (including hormonal contraceptive use and menstrual-cycle variability), and some samples were not analyzed due to quality-control issues (e.g., small tissue mass or incorrect gross anatomy diagnosis). This paper is centrally about endometriosis — it uses DESI-MS imaging to distinguish molecular signatures of ectopic endometrial lesions from eutopic endometrium and to highlight associated metabolic markers.

Read from the paper's body, not the abstract. Not a substitute for reading the paper. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

Endometriosis is a pathologic condition affecting approximately 10% of women in their reproductive years. Characterized by abnormal growth of uterine endometrial tissue in other body areas, endometriosis can cause severe abdominal pain and/or infertility. Despite devastating consequences to patients' quality of life, the causes of endometriosis are not fully understood and validated diagnostic markers for endometriosis have not been identified. Molecular analyses of ectopic and eutopic endometrial tissues could lead to enhanced understanding of the disease. Here, we apply desorption electrospray ionization (DESI) mass spectrometry (MS) imaging to chemically and spatially characterize the molecular profiles of 231 eutopic and ectopic endometrial tissues from 89 endometriosis patients. DESI-MS imaging allowed clear visualization of endometrial glandular and stromal regions within tissue samples. Statistical models built from DESI-MS imaging data allowed classification of endometriosis lesions with overall accuracies of 89.4%, 98.4%, and 98.8% on training, validation, and test sample sets, respectively. Further, molecular markers that are significantly altered in ectopic endometrial tissues when compared to eutopic tissues were identified, including fatty acids and glycerophosphoserines. Our study showcases the value of MS imaging to investigate the molecular composition of endometriosis lesions and pinpoints metabolic markers that may provide new knowledge on disease pathogenesis.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

Condition tags

mesh:D004715endometriosisinfertility

MeSH descriptors

Biomarkers Endometriosis Endometrium Spectrometry, Mass, Electrospray Ionization Adult Biomarkers Choristoma Choristoma Choristoma Choristoma Endometriosis Endometriosis Endometrium Endometrium Female Humans Middle Aged Molecular Imaging Molecular Imaging Quality of Life

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (64)

Cited by (11)

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-06-04T01:30:01.192114+00:00
openalex
last seen: 2026-06-10T17:14:06.276822+00:00
pubmed
last seen: 2026-05-13T22:22:29.487098+00:00
License: CC0 · commercial use OK