Mass spectrometry future trends

Gray, D. J., Burns, R., Brunswick, P. el al., in Plasma Source Mass Spectrometry Current Trends and Future Developments. The Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge (2005). 

The recent development and comparative application of modern separation techniques with regard to determination of alkylphosphonic acids and lewisite derivatives have been demonstrated. This report highlights advantages and shortcomings of GC equipped with mass spectrometry detector and HPLC as well as CE with UV-Vis detector. The comparison was made from the sampling point of view and separation/detection ability. The derivatization procedure for GC of main degradation products of nerve agents to determine in water samples was applied. Direct determination of lewisite derivatives by HPLC-UV was shown. Also optimization of indirect determination of alkylphosphonic acids in CE-UV was developed. Finally, the new instrumental development and future trends will be discussed. 

Werner E, Heilier JF, DucruixC, EzanE, JunotC andTabet JC. 2008. Mass spectrometry for the identification of the discriminating signals from metabolomics Current status and future trends. J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci 871(2) 143—163. 

Cox, K., Clarke, N., Rindgen, D. and Korfmacher, W., Higher Throughput Metabolite Identification in Drug Discovery Current Capabilities and Future Trends, American Society for Mass Spectrometry 2000 Conference Abstract, Long Beach, CA, USA, 2000. 

Electrospray in the mid 1980s revolutionized biological mass spectrometry, in particular in the field of protein and peptide sequence analysis. Electrospray is a concentration-dependent, rather than a mass-dependent process, and maximum sensitivity is achieved at low flow rates with high-concentration, low-volume samples (Griffiths 2000). Joint NMR, x-ray diffraction, electrophoresis, and chromatography techniques with mass spectrometry (MS) techniques would be a trend in the future. 

Trends in mass spectrometry focus on the improvement of instrumentation, of several techniques in order to minimize sample volume, to improve sensitivity and to reduce detection limits. This is combined with increasing the speed of several analyses, with automation of analytical procedures and subsequently reducing the price of analysis. A minimizing of sample volumes means a reduction of waste volume with the aim of developing green chemistry . Furthermore, new analytical techniques involve a development of quantification procedures to improve the accuracy and precision of analytical data. Special attention in future will be given to the development of hyphenated mass spectrometric techniques for speciation analysis and of surface analytical techniques with improved lateral resolution in the nm scale range. 

Future Developments and Trends in Inorganic Mass Spectrometry... 

Judging from the degree of apparent interest and the number of papers published in the field of elemental TOF-MS over the last 3-4 years, it appears that this marriage is one full of promise for the future of elemental analysis. Perhaps the primary reason for such a trend is the need for a truly simultaneous mass spectrometer capable of extending capabilities beyond current instrumentation. The fields of ICP and GD atomic emission spectroscopy have been revolutionized by the incorporation of simultaneous array detectors. This revolution is just now beginning in the mass spectrometry field. 

Another current trend that is well underway is the use of more specific analytical instrumentation that allows less extensive sample preparation. The development of mass spectrometric techniques, particularly tandem MS linked to a HPLC or flow injection system, has allowed the specific and sensitive analysis of simple extracts of biological samples (68,70-72). A similar HPLC with UV detection would require significantly more extensive sample preparation effort and, importantly, more method development time. Currently, the bulk of the HPLC-MS efforts have been applied to the analysis of drugs and metabolites in biological samples. Kristiansen et al. (73) have also applied flow-injection tandem mass spectrometry to measure sulfonamide antibiotics in meat and blood using a very simple ethyl acetate extraction step. This important technique will surely find many more applications in the future. 

In the future, mass spectrometry (see Chapter 17) may supersede radiochemical analysis for long-lived radionuclides and require a different set of chemical separations. This trend is opposed to a certain extent by chemical separation processes introduced to achieve ever lower minimum detectable activity requirements and by the continued interest in identifying newly created radioelements. 

For both. A- and B- trichothecenes there is still a lack of simple and reliable screening methods enabling the rapid detection of these mycotoxins at low cost. Besides the increasing demand for rapid screening methods for both A- and B-trichothecens, the use of liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) enabling both quantification and identification of several trichothecenes simultaneously can be considered a major future trend in the analysis of these Fusarium mycotoxins in cereals (Krska et al., 2001). 

This book is divided into three parts. The first section contains introductory chapters on MS and MSI. Chapter I provides an overview of MSI and focuses on current and future trends in the field. The success of a particular MSI experiment depends on the specific MS approach used. Therefore, the second chapter describes the basic principles of mass spectrometry relevant to MSI and includes cross-references to other chapters of this volume for easier navigation. The third chapter reviews the application of MSI to the study of elemental distributions. Following these introductory chapters, there are multiple protocols that describe qualitative and quantitative measurements of endogenous metabolites and xenobiotics as well as their identification and localization. The last section includes protocols for a variety of MSI approaches developed to study peptide and protein distributions. The experimental protocols presented herein encompass most MSI approaches and technologies for samples from a wide range of biological models including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrates. 

C De Luca, E Quattrucci, S Passi. A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the analysis of tocopherol and low-molecular weight phenol contents in foods of vegetable origin. Current status and future trends. Proceedings of Euro Food Chem VIII, Vienna, 1995, pp 74-78. 

FIA and, in particular, computer-controlled derived techniques still have an important contribution to make to quality control aspects in food analysis. Future trends will accompany the changes observed in analytical laboratories, where mass spectrometry-based detectors are replacing molecular spectrophotometry (e.g., diode array detectors [DAD]). Hence, it is expected the hyphenation of flow injection techniques to mass spectrometry, particularly for sample treatment (extraction, sample matrix removal) using FIA. Other less exploited feature, designated as reversed FIA (Mansour and Danielson, 2012), may also have an important role in future years. In this case, sample is applied as carrier, which allows an enhancement of detection limits. The only constraints are possible sample scarcity or high cost and multiplication of artifacts due to interferences. The future application of FIA is left to the imagination and ingenuity of future food analysts. 

The retrospective discussion which this Preface has followed provides a vantage point for attempting to discern likely significant future developments. The trends and achievements just noted refer to the application of mass spectrometry to... 

Biomolecular interaction analysis-mass spectrometry (BIA-MS), a combination of SPR with MS, was first explored by Krone et al. in 1996 where SPR was used to quantify interactions between proteins and MS was used to determine the structural features of die bound proteins. Review articles on SPR-MS describe recent progress in the field of SPR-MS, including future trends and possible applications. ... 

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