Table 1.

The main mass spectrometry techniques used to study lipidomic profiles in human and animal models.

Lipidomic Studies Techniques		Disadvantages	Humans	Animals
Liquid Chromatography (LC-MS/MS)	Analytical technique that involves physical separation of target compounds (or analytes) followed by their mass-based detection.	Expensive and time-consuming approach.	[35,36,37]	[38,39,40]
Shotgun Lipidomics (DI-MS)	Different instrumental platforms operated in direct infusion. Mostly relying on electrospray ionization (ESI).	Ion suppression effects.	[41,42]	[42,43]
Gas Chromatography (GC/MS)	High-resolving power and ability of the MS to provide precise data for identification and quantification of the separated substances.	Inaccurate quantification and identification of non-volatile compounds.	[44,45,46]	[47,48,49]
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Matrix-Assisted Laser Deposition/Ionization (MALDI)	A “soft” ionization technique, since it causes minimal or no fragmentation, which allows the identification of analytes molecular ions, even in complex mixtures of biopolymers.	Low Sensitivity. Lack of automatization and missing embedding into high-throughput lipidomic workflows.	[50,51]	[52,53]