4th Ambient Ionisation SIG Meeting

AMBIENT IONISATION MASS SPECTROMETRY allows the rapid analysis of samples or objects from their native state. The ability to provide selective analyte desorption and ionisation, in an open environment with no prior preparation, has given rise to a number of powerful analytical alternatives, both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Since the commercial availability of a few such techniques have enabled these techniques to be widely adapted within many industries including pharmaceutical analysis, process chemistry, biological imaging, in vivo analysis, proteomics, metabolomics, forensics, and explosives detection.   As yet more ambient ionisation techniques continue to emerge, and the complementary nature of existing desorption and/or ionisation techniques, additional hyphenated methods have been devised, which pushes the total number of documented methods to almost thirty.

The field of ambient MS has progressed rapidly in the last few years, with key advances in both technological and mechanistic understanding creating new directions, which often seem limited only by the imagination of the scientist. Arguably, this area of science could be described as being in its formative years and recommendations have been made for closer investigation of sampling heterogeneity, ion suppression effects, and a critical evaluation of areas for improvement. It is for these reasons that the Ambient Ionisation SIG has been formed. The aims of the SIG are to support BMSS practitioners of ambient ionisation MS, demonstrate the applicability of the different techniques to different application areas, investigate sampling heterogeneity towards better quantitative analysis and understanding suppression/enhancement effects.

Ambient ionisation SIG inter-lab study – Call for participants

The development of commercial direct ambient ionisation sources has grown significantly in recent years, the Ambient Ionisation SIG has decided it would be timely to carry out an inter-laboratory comparison to assess the performance of direct ambient ionisation sources over several application areas. We have developed a protocol to test both qualitative and quantitative performance. We are looking for participants from all areas of mass spectrometry to take part (commercial, academia and vendors).

Please click to access the sign-up sheet and protocol description for this study, we believe the study should only take a couple of hours to complete, but the data and insights gained will be invaluable for the ambient ionisation community.

To aid people with the relatively short deadlines, we have decided to extend the reporting period until the end of July. It is important that you complete and return the attached sign-up sheet to aid the delivery of the samples, as these will be shipped throughout May.

Please come back to me directly if you have any questions, [email protected]  many thanks to those that have already signed up.