Integrating Ambient Mass Spectrometry Imaging and Spatial Transcriptomics on the Same Cancer Tissues to Identify Gene-Metabolite Correlations

Abstract

The combination of spatial metabolomics and spatial transcriptomics can reveal powerful connections between gene expression and metabolism in heterogeneous tissues, but section-to-section variability can convolute data integration. We present a novel method combining Desorption Electrospray Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging spatial metabolomics and spatial transcriptomics on the same tissue sections. We demonstrate this workflow on human breast and lung cancer tissues identifying correlations between metabolites and cancer-related RNA transcripts.