Metallomics laboratory at the unit of Metals and Health
The metallomics laboratory performs measurements of toxic and essential trace elements, often within large epidemiological studies (high-throughput). It has been developed and implemented since more than ten years at the unit of Metals and Health, Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM), KI, and has generated more than 100 original scientific publications. It is primarily a research laboratory, but we may also measure on request, particularly from other research groups, the health sector and Swedish authorities. We aim to develop the laboratory to a core facility at Karolinska Institutet.
In the metallomics laboratory, we measure metals and other elements in biological fluids (e.g. urine, blood and breast milk), tissues (whole tissue samples, specific cells and cellular constituents ), and as well as environmental samples (e.g. water, food and particles), using highly sensitive ICP-MS instruments in clean-room facility.
The available instruments include one Agilent 7500ce and one Agilent 7700x, both quadrupole ICP-MS with collision/reaction cell technology. They are easy to connect to HPLC (Agilent 1100x) for pre-separation of e.g. different metabolites. To enable ICP-MS analysis of samples with more complex matrices, foremost solid samples, these are first digested in a Milestone UltraCLAVE II microwave digestion system.
