Advancing Contaminant Analysis: Leveraging timsTOF Mass Spec to Meet the Current and Future Requirements of POP’s

Explore groundbreaking techniques in environmental analysis, including the latest advancements in MALDI-MS for rapid, chromatography-free assessment of PFAS and their interactions with bacteria.

Learn about a novel workflow combining GC-APCI with TIMS for sensitive and reliable quantification of various persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like dioxins in a single GC run. Enhance your expertise in cutting-edge analytical methods that address critical environmental and health challenges.

Talk #1: MALDI-TIMS-MS analysis of PFAS with timsTOF flex

Speaker: Tian (Autumn) Qiu, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of organic compounds that have attracted global attention for their persistence in the environment, exposure to biological organisms, and their adverse health effects. Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) is a chromatography-free MS method that performs laser-based ionization and in situ analysis on samples. In this talk, I will present our lab's recent progress in developing MALDI-MS analysis of PFAS with trapped ion mobility (TIMS) on various PFAS and demonstrating its application in fast assessment of PFAS-bacteria interactions.

Talk #2: The versatility of GC-APCI-tims-TOF for sub-ppt measurement of targeted POPs to non-targeted analysis of chemicals of emerging concern 

Speaker: Gauthier Eppe, Full Professor and Director of the MSLab and the Molecular Systems (MolSys) Research Unit, Université de Liège, Belgium

For the past decades, GC-HRMS based on magnetic sector instruments has been the main technique for dioxin quantification in food and environmental samples. Presented here is a novel workflow which combines GC-APCI with trapped ion mobility (TIMS) as an orthogonal criterion for the dioxin quantitation, and a high-resolution, ultra-sensitive QTOF. One main benefit is the reliable and sensitive quantification of various classes of POP like PCDDs/PCDFs, dioxin-like PCBs or dioxins jointly in a single GC run.