A combined targeted/untargeted LC-MS/MS-based screening approach for mammalian cell lines treated with ionic liquids: Toxicity correlates with metabolic profile

This work presents the development and validation of a quantitative HILIC UHPLC-ESI-QTOF-MS/MS method for amino acids combined with untargeted metabolic profiling of human corneal epithelial (HCE) cells after treatment with ionic liquids. The work included a preliminary metabotoxicity screening of 14 different ionic liquids, of which 9 carefully selected ionic liquids were chosen for a metabolomics study. This study is focused on the correlation between the toxicity of the ionic liquids and their metabolic profiles. The method development included the comparison of different MS/MS acquisition modes. A sequential window acquisition of all theoretical fragment ion mass spectra (SWATH) method with variable Q1 window widths and narrow Q1 target windows of 5 Da for most of the amino acids was selected as the optimal acquisition mode. Due to the absence of a true blank matrix, C-13,N-15-isotopically labelled amino acids were utilized as surrogate calibrants, instead of proteinogenic amino acids. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis of the median effective concentrations (EC50) of 9 selected ionic liquids showed a correlation with their metabolic profile measured by the untargeted screening.