Mass spectrometry ( MS ) - based neurochemical monitoring : perspectives for non - human primate research

The monitoring of neurochemicals represents a challenge for current analytical techniques due to a variety of factors such as compositional complexity, limited sample-amounts and endogenous inferences. Advances in MS provide great opportunities for sensitive in vivo monitoring of neurochemicals, offering benefits including simple sample preparation, broad capability for analysis of structurally diverse compounds and rich structural information of analytes. MS has also become an indispensable tool for neuropeptide analysis, offering tremendous potential in the discovery of novel signaling peptides and biomarkers. This review covers recent advances in MS-based neurochemical measurements including a comparison with related techniques, neuropeptide discovery and chromatographic separation. Issues relating to in vivo sample collection and sample preparation are discussed. We highlight perspectives for the use of MS for neurochemical analysis in non-human primates.