PROJECT
SUPERVISORS
Project Supervisor
Sven Heiles
Background
I studied chemistry at the Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. This was followed by a PhD in physical chemistry investigating gas-phase clusters with mass spectrometric methods combined with a stay abroad at the University of Birmingham, UK to learn and apply theoretical methods. Subsequently, I moved to the lab of Evan R. Williams at the UC Berkeley, USA as postdoc working on high resolution mass spectrometry and ion fragmentation. This sparked my interest for bioanalytical sciences leading to my second postdoc with Bernhard Spengler at the Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.
At the same university, I later started a junior research group that worked on the combination between high resolution mass spectrometry imaging and advanced tandem mass spectrometry tools for metabolites and lipids. Since 2022 I am assistant professor for Lipidomics at the University Duisburg-Essen, Germany and group leader of the Lipidomics group at the ISAS in Dortmund, Germany extending the scope of my bioanalytical research from bioanalytical methods to clinical questions.
Research
As a research group we aim to reveal aspects of lipid metabolism and its dysregulation in diseases. We tackle this challenge by developing novel bioanalytical instrumentation and by establishing robust workflows. We aim to mass spectrometrically track metabolic changes of lipid composition and location of lipids within tissues and cells. This is important because lipid metabolism is known to change in most cells and organs when infected or diseased offering the possibility to use lipids as diagnostic probes or understand disease progression by identifying dysregulated of metabolic pathways.
Therefore, we want to provide tools to investigate how the regulation of the lipid metabolism works, with particular focus on the impact of cancer and cardiovascular diseases on lipid desaturation, elongation, and remodelling. For this purpose, we have developed mass spectrometry imaging methods that can probe the localization of metabolites and lipid with high lateral resolution. This allows us to study the lipid and metabolite composition of individual cells and how these molecules are influenced by the cellular phenotype and vice versa.
Publications
Müller, M. A., Zweig, N., Spengler, B., Weinert, M., Heiles, S. (2023) Lipid Signatures and Inter-Cellular Heterogeneity of Naïve and Lipopolysaccharide-Stimulated Human Microglia-like Cells, Anal. Chem. 95, 11672-11679 DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c01533
Schneemann, J., Schäfer, K.-C., Spengler, B., Heiles, S. (2022) IR-MALDI Mass Spectrometry Imaging with Plasma Post-Ionization of Nonpolar Metabolites, Anal. Chem. 94, 16086–16094 DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.2c03247
Wäldchen, F., Mohr, F., Wagner, A. H., Heiles, S., (2020) Multifunctional Reactive MALDI Matrix Enabling High-Lateral Resolution Dual Polarity MS imaging and Lipid C=C Position-Resolved MS2 imaging, Anal. Chem. 92, 14130-14138 DOI: 10.1021/acs.analchem.0c03150
Wäldchen, F., Spengler, B., Heiles, S. (2019) Reactive Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Mass Spectrometry Imaging Using an Intrinsically Photoreactive Paternò–Büchi Matrix for Double-Bond Localization in Isomeric Phospholipids, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 11816-11820 DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b05868
v Kompauer, M., Heiles, S., Spengler, B., (2017) Atmospheric pressure MALDI mass spectrometry imaging of tissues and cells at 1.4-µm lateral resolution, Nat. Methods 14, 90-96 DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.4071