Winner of the Golden Spatula 2024
Development of a Lipidomic Workflow to Identify and Quantify Phospholipids using Electron-Activated Dissociation and Liquid Chromatography Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry, Hogeschool Arnhem-Nijmegen
This year, the KNCV Golden Spatula Selection Committee chose the thesis by Mitan Kadir, written as part of the Analytical Chemistry program at Arnhem-Nijmegen University of Applied Sciences, as the winner of the 2024 Golden Spatula Award.
The report provides a remarkably clear description of the research conducted by Mitan Kadir during his graduation project in collaboration with the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, Metabolomics and Analytics Centre, under the supervision of Dr. Frank Rutten.
Mitan Kadir conducted research into the identification of lipids using mass spectrometry. Lipid structures are roughly similar, but very numerous in number with minimal differences in fatty acid chain length and unsaturation. This presents the study of lipids (lipidomics) with the challenge of identifying the lipids and selectively determining their quantity in order to better understand biological processes and identify potential new biomarkers for degenerative diseases.
In a very detailed introduction, Mitan Kadir has written a theoretical section that provides a great deal of technical detail, comparing different mass spectrometry techniques with each other. These sections provide a great deal of insight into existing knowledge, with the challenge of keeping problems clear. Mitan Kadir has succeeded very well in this. The research question is a logical follow-up to this, namely to compare the various mass spectrometry detectors and mass identification with regard to lipids. The research question is clearly formulated, relevant, and extremely well executed. The execution reveals a clear systematic approach, with a step-by-step analysis ultimately leading to useful results, including modeling and validation. The jury was very impressed by the research in the field of analytical chemistry, which was carried out in clear language and with a high degree of independence.
The other two prizes were awarded to:
