Featured webinar at Thermo Fisher’s vBooth - ASMS2020

Analyzing the Volatilome via Secondary Electro-Spray Ionization (SESI): Technical Development and its Application to Breath and Microbial VOCs

Speaker: Dr. Guillermo Vidal-de-Miguel, CEO at Fossil Ion Technology

Abstract: The metabolome is very dynamic, with multiple molecules being continuously absorbed, synthesized, and degraded in response to the environment and other endogenous stimuli. The volatilome (the volatile fraction of the metabolome) offers a unique window to characterize the time dimension of metabolic studies because it is available non-invasively and continuously, but relevant metabolites tend to be very diluted.
Modern instruments are sensitive enough to detect vapors of very large molecules with remarkably low vapor pressure, provided they are efficiently ionized. Secondary Electro-Spray Ionization High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (SESI-HRMS) enables the real-time analysis of biologically relevant metabolites with very low vapor pressures at minute concentrations. This enabled applications like breath analysis for biomarker discovery, pharmacokinetic profiling, and micro-organism monitoring. This presentation will review the technical development of SESI and its application to breath-analysis and the detection and monitoring of microbial VOCs.