J-C Wolf, M. Schaer, P. Siegenthaler, R. Zenobi

A novel active capillary dielectric barrier discharge plasma ionization (DBDI) technique for mass spectrometry is applied to the direct detection of thirteen chemical warfare related compounds, including sarin, and compared to secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) in terms of selectivity and sensitivity.

J-C Wolf, M. Schaer, P. Siegenthaler, R. Zenobi

A novel active capillary dielectric barrier discharge plasma ionization (DBDI) technique for mass spectrometry is applied to the direct detection of thirteen chemical warfare related compounds, including sarin, and compared to secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) in terms of selectivity and sensitivity. The investigated compounds include an intact chemical warfare agent and structurally related molecules, hydrolysis products and/or precursors of highly toxic nerve (G-series, V-series and "new" nerve agents), blistering and incapacitating warfare agents. …

James C Reynolds, Modupe A Jimoh, Cristina Guallar-Hoyas, Colin S Creaser, Salman Siddiqui and C L Paul Thomas

A two-stage thermal desorption/secondary electrospray ionization/time-of-flight mass spectrometry for faster targeted breath profiling has been studied. A new secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) source was devised to constrain the thermal desorption plume and promote efficient mixing in the ionization region. Further, a chromatographic preseparation stage was introduced to suppress interferences from siloxanes associated with thermal desorption profiles of exhaled breath samples…

Jingjing He, P. M-L Sinues, M. Hollmén, Xue Li, M. Detmar & R. Zenobi

There is increasing interest in the development of noninvasive diagnostic methods for early cancer detection, to improve the survival rate and quality of life of cancer patients. Identification of volatile metabolic compounds may provide an approach for noninvasive early diagnosis of malignant diseases.

Helen J. Martin,a James C. Reynolds,a Svetlana Riazanskaiab and C. L. Paul Thomas*a

The non-invasive nature of volatile organic compound (VOC) sampling from skin makes this a priority in the development of new screening and diagnostic assays. Evaluation of recent literature highlights the tension between the analytical utility of ambient ionisation approaches for skin profiling and the practicality of undertaking larger campaigns (higher statistical power), or undertaking research in remote locations. This study describes how VOC may be sampled from skin and recovered from a polydimethylsilicone sampling coupon and analysed by thermal desorption (TD) interfaced to secondary electrospray ionisation (SESI) time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MS) for the high throughput screening of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from human skin…

C. Ballabio, S. Cristoni, G. Puccio, M. Kohler, M. R. Sala, P. Brambilla, P. M-L Sinues

Blood cultures are routine tests to determine whether micro-organisms have entered the patient’s bloodstream. Automated systems, based on the detection of CO2 increase in the culture media, have considerably improved the screening efficiency for the detection of bacteria. However, further identification of bacteria still requires time consuming culturing procedures.

P. M-L Sinues, L. Meier, C. Berchtold, M.Ivanov, N. Sievi, G. Camen, M. Kohler, R. Zenobi

Background: It has been suggested that exhaled breath contains relevant information on health status. Objectives: We hypothesized that a novel mass spectrometry (MS) technique to analyze breath in real time could be useful to differentiate breathprints from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and controls (smokers and nonsmokers) …

Neil A. Devenport, Daniel J. Blenkhorn, Daniel J. Weston, James C. Reynolds, and Colin S. Creaser

A direct, ambient ionization method has been developed for the determination of creatinine in urine that combines derivatization and thermal desorption with extractive electrospray ionization and ion mobility-mass spectrometry. The volatility of creatinine was enhanced by a rapid on-probe aqueous acylation reaction, using a custom-made thermal desorption probe, allowing thermal desorption and ionization of the monoacylated derivative..

P. M-L Sinues, R. Zenobi, M. Kohler

Investigations on breath analysis have provided preliminary data on its potential in the noninvasive diagnosis of lung diseases. Although the conventional comparisons of exhaled breath in study populations (ie, diseased vs healthy) may help to identify patients with various lung diseases, we believe that the analysis of exhaled breath holds promise beyond this scenario …

J. Zhu, J. Jimenez-Díaz, H. D. Bean, N. A. Daphtary, M. I. Aliyeva, L. K. A. Lundblad and J. E. Hill

Before breath-based diagnostics for lung infections can be implemented in the clinic, it is necessary to understand how the breath volatiles change during the course of infection, and ideally, to identify a core set of breath markers that can be used to diagnose the pathogen at any point during the infection …

C. Berchtold, L. Meier, R. Steinhoff, R. Zenobi

Breath is considered to be an easily accessible matrix, whose chemical composition relates to compounds present in blood. Therefore many metabolites are expected in exhaled breath, which may be used in the future for the development of diagnostic methods. In this article, a new strategy to discriminate between exhaled endogenous metabolites and exhaled exogenous contaminants by direct high-resolution mass spectrometry is introduced.

Neil A. Devenport, Laura C. Sealey, Faisal H. Alruways, Daniel J. Weston, James C. Reynolds, and Colin S. Creaser.

A direct, ambient ionization method has been developed using atmospheric pressure thermal desorption–extractive electrospray–mass spectrometry (AP/TD-EESI-MS) for the detection of the genotoxic impurity (GTI) methyl p-toluenesulfonate (MTS) in a surrogate pharmaceutical matrix. A custom-made thermal desorption probe was used to the desorb and vaporize MTS from the solid state, by rapid heating to 200 °C then cooling to ambient temperature, with a cycle time of 6 min…

P. M.-L. Sinues, M. Kohler, R. Zenobi

The metabolic phenotype varies widely due to external factors such as diet and gut microbiome composition, among others. Urine metabolite profiling studies have suggested that there are highly individual phenotypes that persist over extended periods of time. This hypothesis was tested by analyzing the exhaled breath of a group of subjects during nine days by mass spectrometry.

J. Zhu, H. D. Bean, J. Jiménez-Díaz, and J. E. Hill

Bacterial pneumonia is one of the leading causes of disease-related morbidity and mortality in the world, in part because the diagnostic tools for pneumonia are slow and ineffective. To improve the diagnosis success rates and treatment outcomes for bacterial lung infections, we are exploring the use of SESI-MS breath analysis as a rapid, noninvasive method for determining …

Christian Berchtold; Stefan Schmid; Lukas Meiera and Renato Zenobi.

γ-Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and γ-butyrolactone (GBL) are used as “date rape drugs” since they cause catalepsy and memory loss. A new application of secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) mass spectrometry for in situ detection of GHB and GBL in drinks and body fluids is introduced.

J. Zhu, J. E. Hill

Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EC O157:H7), as well as its recently emerging non-O157 relatives, are a notorious group of pathogenic bacteria associated with foodborne outbreaks. In this study, we demonstrated that secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (SESI-MS) could be a rapid and accurate detection technology for foodborne pathogens …

P. M-L Sinues, M. Kohler and R. Zenobi

The development of noninvasive analytical techniques is of interest to the field of chronobiology, in order to reveal the human metabolome that seems to show temporal patterns and to predict internal body time. We report on the real-time mass spectrometric analysis of human breath as a potential method to be used in this field.

L. Meier, C. Berchtold, S. Schmid and R. Zenobi

In this study, we used secondary electrospray ionization mass spectrometry assisted by an ion funnel (IF) operating at ambient pressure to find compounds in the mass range of 100–500 m/z in online breath fingerprinting experiments. In low-resolution experiments conducted on an ion trap instrument, we found that pyridin is present in breath of individuals long after drinking coffee …

G. Vidal-de-Miguel, M. Macía, P. Pinacho, and J. Blanco

In secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) systems, gaseous analytes exposed to an elecrospray plume become ionized after charge is transferred from the charging electrosprayed particles to the sample species. Current SESI systems have shown a certain potential. However, their ionization efficiency is limited by …

G. Vidal-de-Miguel, A. Herrero

In secondary electrospray ionization (SESI) systems, gaseous analytes exposed to an electrospray plume become ionized after charge is transferred from the charging electrosprayed particles (the charging agent) to the vapor species. Currently available SESI models are valid for simplified systems having only one type of electrosprayed species …