7. Conclusions
In this review, we presented new improvements of SPME that allow the technology to be successfully applied to metabolomics analysis in various areas of study. Despite the fact that SPME is a relatively young technology in global metabolite screening, and there being only a limited number of literature reports on the topic com- pared to standard methods, SPME has been shown to offer a number of features that permit the determination of new information un- available to date with the currently applied protocols (e.g., obtaining snapshot of the metabolome at the time of sampling, good spatial resolution, and extraction of unstable compounds). The solvent- less nature of SPME makes the method very attractive for various
on-site analyses, such as searching for new biologically-active sub- stances in vivo in the natural environment, or clinical analysis, such as intra-surgical monitoring of biomarkers. Because the method offers very efficient sample clean-up and can be easily coupled to mass spectrometers with no chromatographic separation required for tar- geted analysis, the overall analytical process can even be shortened to a few minutes. Further development of the technology in the metabolomics area still has a long road ahead full of great challenges, since it is through real-life applications that further demand is established, showing researchers where next to concentrate their efforts. To take full ad- vantage of this new technology and to introduce it in practice in many areas of science, collaboration is necessary between analyt- ical chemists and experts in biology, medicine and other specialties.