Highly polar and ionic metabolites, such as sugars, most amino acids, organic acids or nucleotides are not retained by conventional reversed-phase LC columns and polar stationary phases and hydrophilic-interaction LC lacks of robustness, which is still limiting their applications for untargeted metabolomics where reproducibility is a must. Biological samples such as blood, urine or even tissues include many hydrophilic compounds secreted from cells, their analysis is essential for biomarker discovery, disease progression or treatment effects. This review focuses on CE coupled to MS as a mature technique for untargeted metabolomics including sample pretreatment, types of matrices, analytical methods, applications and data treatment strategies for polar compound analysis in biological matrices. The main applications and results of CE-MS in untargeted metabolomics are discussed and presented in a tabulated format.
Keywords: CE-MS; biomarker discovery; polar metabolites.