Owlstone are hosting a free online webinar given by Colin Creaser, Professor of Analytical Chemistry at Loughborough University.

This webinar is the first in a series of talks aiming to provide up-to-date knowledge about the emerging analytical technique of IMS-MS.

Register and attend for free to gain knowledge about:

• Latest developments using tandem microscale FAIMS & mass spec
• Metabolite and peptide determination in biofluids
• Metabolite profiling
• Monitoring impurities

An article recently published in the Journal of Chromatography A highlights the use of Owlstone’s chip based ultraFAIMS technology in conjunction with Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography - High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS). This technique was used to improve the qualitative and quantitative analysis of (R/S) ibuprofen 1-Β-O-acyl glucuronide (IAG) metabolite in urine. The ultraFAIMS unit was used in conjunction with an Agilent 1200 series HPLC and an Agilent 6230 time-of-flight mass spectrometer fitted with a JetStream ESI source. Click here to find out more.

Enhanced performance in the determination of ibuprofen 1-beta-O-acyl glucuronide in urine by combining high field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry with liquid chromatography-time-of-flight mass spectrometry, Robert W. Smith, Danielle E. Toutoungi, James C. Reynolds, Anthony W.T. Bristow, Andrew Ray, Ashley Sage, Ian D. Wilson, Daniel J. Weston, Billy Boyle and Colin S. Creaser, Journal of Chromatography A, 2013, doi 10.1016/j.chroma.2012.12.065

Abstract: - The incorporation of a chip-based high field asymmetric waveform ion mobility spectrometry (FAIMS) separation in the ultra (high)-performance liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC–HRMS) determination of the (R/S) ibuprofen 1-beta-O-acyl glucuronide metabolite in urine is reported. UHPLC–FAIMS–HRMS reduced matrix chemical noise, improved the limit of quantitation approximately two-fold and increased the linear dynamic range compared to the determination of the metabolite without FAIMS separation. A quantitative evaluation of the prototype UHPLC–FAIMS–HRMS system showed better reproducibility for the drug metabolite (%RSD 2.7%) at biologically relevant concentrations in urine. In-source collision induced dissociation of the FAIMS-selected deprotonated metabolite was used to fragment the ion prior to mass analysis, enhancing selectivity by removing co-eluting species and aiding the qualitative identification of the metabolite by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of the fragment ions.

Innovations in Mass Spectrometry Instrumentation conference will be held in St. Petersburg 14^th – 18^th of July 2013. The conference is inviting abstracts relating to Ion Mobility and other Mass Spectrometry instrumentation (details here) and welcomes scientists, mass spectrometry companies, government experts, experts in education and innovations, students, and people interesting in applications of MS and new MS based technologies in biochemistry, chemistry, pharmacy, biotechnologies and environmental science. The deadline for abstract submission is March 15^th, 2013. Click here for registration details.

The recently released ebook 'Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 years' was reviewed in the December 2012 issue of 'Mass Matters' (Edition 69), the official publication of the British Mass Spectrometry Society (BMSS). Here is the full text:

Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years brings together contributions from more than 30 academic and industrial researchers who use or develop Ion Mobility Spectrometry-Mass Spectrometry systems, including Alison Ashcroft (University of Leeds), Tony Bristow (Astrazeneca) and Colin Creaser (Loughborough University). The book was produced in collaboration with Owlstone Ltd., a Cambridge (UK) based developer and manufacturer of FAIMS instruments. The ebook is available under a Creative Commons license so anyone can download, forward, print and copy it for free.

Ion Mobility Spectrometry is an established technique for the separation and characterisation of gas-phase ions based on their differing velocities in an electric field.¹ Traditional IMS uses drift tubes and static electric fields to analyse mixtures of ions and has been deployed by homeland defence services as a means of detecting explosives and chemical warfare agents. Continuing technological developments have led to the introduction of new IMS variations such as Field Asymmetric Ion Mobility Spectrometry (FAIMS) and Travelling Wave Ion Mobility Spectrometry. These variants exploit the change in the mobility of different ions when exposed to high strength oscillating electric fields and allow better, faster separation.

“The travelling wave and microscale FAIMS devices [have] greatly increased the applicability of ion mobility across a wide range of analytes.” Tony Bristow, Astrazeneca

IMS can be used as a sample pre-separation step before a mass spectrometer, in much the same way as traditional chromatographic methods; this is referred to as Ion Mobility Spectrometry - Mass Spectrometry (IMS-MS). Recent commercialization of hyphenated FAIMS (DMS)² and T-Wave³ IMS-MS instruments have led to an expansion in the number of people using the technique.4 IMS-MS is suited in particular to the separation of complex mixtures based on the mobility of analyte ions (which is dependent on their charge state and collision cross section rather than mass/charge ratio). This provides a new route to distinguishing components of similar mass, such as conformers and isomers, in chemical mixtures. This has led to interest from researchers in the ‘omics’ sciences (i.e. proteomics, metabolomics etc.) in particular, and from those looking for particular compounds that are otherwise lost in background ‘chemical noise’. The techniques’ increasing user base is also driving the development of a wave of new applications for IMS-MS, such as its use in imaging mass spectrometry and as a clinical tool for the diagnosis of disease.

“FAIMS provides robust and highly reproducible on-line sample fractionation that improves overall peptide discovery by decreasing sample complexity, enabling detection of co-eluting species with differing m/z and radically reduces background chemical noise.” Robert L. Moritz, Institute for Systems Biology

The purpose of this collection was to bring together the leading researchers in the field and for them to highlight their research and how they think the field will develop over the next five years. Each contributor was asked to address three questions; What their own IMS-MS research activities are/have been, what they think the most significant instrumentation or applications developments in IMS-MS have been and where they predict IMS-MS will make the most impact in the next 5 years. As well as providing a wealth of useful information to those currently using or intending to use IMS-MS, the book provides some interesting insights that would not be found in a traditional journal or textbook, for instance - “Under [the guidance of Roger Guevremont] the FAIMS waveform generator was brought from a dangerous device prone to discharge and blown operational amplifiers to a safe commercial device that required little to no maintenance after setup.” - Daniel Beach, University of Guelph. The predictions the authors make for the future of IMS-MS range from the integration of FAIMS with miniaturized mass spectrometers to the potential for IMS-MS to replace traditional chromatographic techniques for routine analysis. If you want to find out more about these predictions and all the others made by the authors, you’ll have to download the book!

The response so far to the ebook has been excellent, with over 1700 copies downloaded in November/December. Speaking about the ebook, Billy Boyle, co-founder of Owlstone Ltd., said “The response from the community has been fantastic, it shows how interest in IMS-MS is increasing, and I think it indicates just how important it is going to become as an analytical technique in the next few years.”

Free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”

References

1. G. E. Eiceman and Z. Karpas, Ion Mobility Spectrometry, 2nd edition, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. USA, 2005
2. www.ultrafaims.com
3. Waters Synapt
4. The Rise and Rise of IMS

In the recently released ebook 'Ion Mobility - Mass Spectrometry: The Next 5 Years' we asked contributors to make predictions on the future direction and applications of Ion Mobility Spectrometry - Mass Spectrometry. As you'll see, some of the predictions seem more certain than others, with multiple contributors making the same suggestion. Below we have compiled all of the opinions into one place, with links to the relevant pages of the ebook.

1. Integration of FAIMS/DMS with miniaturized mass spectrometers - Bristow, Nazarov, Fernandez, Hariharan, Blackburn
2. Solvent vapor doping to enhance separation - Yost, Shvartsburg, López
3. More use of IMS for Mass Spectrometry imaging - Bristow, Hariss, López, Hariharan
4. Ongoing increase in the use of IMS/FAIMS/travelling wave - Mass Spectrometry for the analysis of complex biological mixtures (i.e. proteomics, metabolomics etc.) - Bristow, Moritz, López, Vidal-de-Miguel, Hariharan, Bell, Toutoungi, Cooper, Arce, Beach, Evans, Thibault Blackburn
5. Clinical diagnosis - Bristow, Baumbach, Vidal-de-Miguel, Eiceman, Blackburn
6. Complementary filtering technology for liquid chromatography - Bell, Toutoungi, Eiceman
7. Increase in use for separating enantiomers/isomers - Bristow, López, Thibault
8. Almost real time reaction monitoring using IMS (in a similar way to TLC, HPLC) - Krueger, Gabelica
9. Coupling IMS to new types of ion sources enabling field analysis without sample prep (e.g. DESI, DART, etc.) - Fernandez, Borsdorf
10. Replacement of traditional chromatographic techniques with IMS - Dwivedi, Borsdorf, Evans, Ashcroft
11. Validation of the theory of ionisation processes and ion formation - Vautz
12. More commercial uses for very fast devices (Owlstone) and very sensitive devices - Purves
13. 2-D FAIMS-IMS systems - Shvartsburg, Vidal-de-Miguel
14. Use of IMS for studying protein/supramolecular conformations - Tourné, Evans, Gabelica
15. Qualitative analysis for quality control in food/agricultural products - Arce

Free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”

Recent years have seen the increasing commercialisation of new ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) variants. A strong push towards new IMS technology is coming from a pair of companies located in Spain; SEADM (Sociedad Europea de Análisis Diferencial de Movilidad SL) and Ramem.

Transversal Modulation IMS (TM-IMS)

SEADM, located in Valladolid, have developed a new IMS technique that they refer to as Transversal Modulation IMS (TM-IMS). This variant of IMS uses an axial electric field in combination with an oscillating transversal electric field to produce a continuous output of mobility selected ions at atmospheric pressure (Figure 1). Selected ions are focussed through an analyzer outlet and deflected ions are not transferred. The selected ions have a narrow range of mobilities due to being separated in space. SEADM have designed the instrument to have accessible inlet and outlets, making it easier to integrate into hyphenated systems such as ion mobility spectrometry - mass spectrometers.

Writing in the recently released free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - the Next 5 Years”, SEADM R&D Team Leader Guillermo Vidal-de-Miguel states that TM-IMS is an ideal choice for tandem IMS-MS analysis in and that it could even be doubly hyphenated for IMS-IMS-MS analysis as it will reduce background chemical noise with only a moderate loss of transmission. He predicts that the technique will be used for trace detection of explosives and illicit substances, breath analysis, single cell monitoring and specific proteomic detection.

Figure 1 Trajectories of various ions during TM-IMS. Ions of a particular mobility are filtered preferentially before detection.

Find out more about TM-IMS:

Transversal Modulation Ion Mobility Spectrometry (TM-IMS), A New Mobility Filter Overcoming Turbulence Related Limitations; G. Vidal-de-Miguel, M. Macía, and J. Cuevas; Anal. Chem., 2012, 84 (18), pp 7831–7837; DOI: 10.1021/ac301127u; Publication Date (Web): August 27, 2012

Vidal-de-Miguel, G. Method and Apparatus to Produce Steady Beams of Mobility Selected Ions Via Time Dependent Electric Fields. U.S. Patent Application No. 20100243883, 2010

IONER High Resolution IMS

Over the last 5 years Ramem have been developing an Ion Mobility Spectrometer based on Differential Mobility Analysis (DMA), with a high sheath flow of gas that gives higher sensitivity and resolving power than drift time IMS (Figure 2). Traditionally, cylindrical DMAs are used for the analysis of submicrometer aerosols rather than ionised molecules. Writing in “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - the Next 5 Years”, Chemistry Researcher at Ramem Silvia López states that a major advantage of DMA over drift time IMS is that it works continuously rather than in pulse, allowing detection during the stabilisation time. Ramem are working on minimising ion losses during DMA and are aiming to have a complete DMA-MS system by the end of 2013.

Figure 2 Schematic of Ioner instrument

Read more about Ioner, high resolution IMS

Santos, J. P., Hontañón, E., Ramiro, E., and Alonso, M.: Performance evaluation of a high-resolution parallel-plate differential mobility analyzer, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 9, 2419-2429, doi:10.5194/acp-9-2419-2009, 2009

Ioner

In the recently published free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”, Professor Alexandre Shvartsburg (PNNL) discusses what he thinks the most significant contributions to the field of IMS have been and predicts how he thinks the field is going to evolve over the course of the next 5 years.

Prof. Shvartsburg predicts that the emphasis of front-line mobility research will continue to move from linear IMS towards non-linear techniques such as FAIMS (field asymmetric ion mobility spectrometry, AKA differential mobility spectrometry), likely augmented with the use of vapour dopants and other additives. He also suggests that the proliferation of both conventional IMS and FAIMS instrumentation will lead to the use of hybrid FAIMS-IMS platforms as a route to higher separation power. To read more of Prof. Shvartsburg’s predictions and those of more than 30 other leading researchers download the

Free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”

Writing in his section of the new ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) ebook (“Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”) Dr. Glenn Harris (Vanderbilt University) explains how he has used ion mobility spectrometry as a post ionization separation technique in mass spectrometry imaging experiments using tissue samples (Figure 1). He found that the incorporation of IMS as a separation stage improved both the selectivity and the dynamic range possible in mass spectrometry imaging experiments. This led to a “dramatic enrichment” of the quality of mass spectrometry tissue images. Dr. Harris’ expects that with the introduction of more commercial IMS instruments increasing numbers of researchers will encounter the benefits of IMS.

If you want to read more about Dr. Harris’ work and that of other top researchers as well as their predictions for the future of IMS applications download the

Free ebook “Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - The Next 5 Years”

Figure 1. Nominally isobaric ions are separated by ion mobility spectrometry to assist in the localization of biologically relevant species for imaging mass spectrometry studies.

Here is a quick analysis of the number of “ion mobility spectrometry” publications returned when using that search term in Web of Science for the last 30 years of research. As can be seen in Fig. 1 the annual number of IMS publications is increasing, with 2011 being a particularly vintage year for the field. To compare, the average annual yearly increase since 2002 has been ~16% whereas there was a 38% increase between 2010 and 2011.

Fig. 1 The annual number of IMS papers published from 1983 - 2011

This increase is mirrored in the increase in the number of conference papers presented at the ASMS (American Society for Mass Spectrometry) annual conference that were returned when searching using the term “ion mobility” (Fig. 2)

Specific branches of ion mobility spectrometry such as FAIMS and travelling wave show increasing presence in papers at the ASMS annual conference since 1997 (Fig. 3). Particularly striking is the increase in papers using travelling wave techniques, which is consistent with Waters' reported rapid growth in sales of the Synapt instrument after its release in 2006. It appears that a similarly steep increase may be occurring for research involving FAIMS/DMS techniques. This increase will be further accelerated by the increasing uptake of the new SelexION instrument and Owlstone’s ultraFAIMS platform.

Fig. 3 The number of presentations at ASMS annual conferences that involved “FAIMS OR DMS OR differential mobility OR SelexION” (blue circles) and “TWIMS OR SYNAPT OR travelling (traveling) wave ion mobility” (red circles)

by Theo Wilson and Danielle Toutoungi, Owlstone Ltd.

Characterization of a miniature, ultra-high-field, ion mobility spectrometer

Ashley Wilks, Matthew Hart, Andrew Koehl, John Somerville, Billy Boyle and David Ruiz-Alonso

Volume 15, Number 3 (2012), 199-222, DOI: 10.1007/s12127-012-0109-x

Published in a recent special issue of the International Journal for Ion Mobility Spectrometry, Wilks et al. present the experimental results of the characterization of Owlstone’s recently developed ultra-high field ion mobility spectrometry technology. Owlstone’s technology uses a combination of multiple micron-gap ion separators and a topologically novel high frequency separation waveform drive. This technology offers a solution to trace and ultra-trace chemical detection/monitoring problems, that conventional IMS and DMS/FAIMS systems find challenging.

Jim Reynolds's paper from ISIMS can be downloaded from the ultraFAIMS events page.

If you know of other places where IMS-MS papers/posters can be downloaded, let us know.

We have produced a dynamic interactive chart that allows easy comparison of the publication and citation records of the key journals in the FAIMS-MS field. The chart can be modified to display data in bubble, bar or line chart formats. In in each case the x and y axes can be adjusted using the associated drop down menus to show publication year, number of citations, number of publications, total publications and average number of citations per publication. By pressing the 'play' button in the bottom left hand of the chart, the evolution of these values with time can be observed. Data can also be visualized by means of color and bubble size (see upper right hand of chart). Bars bubbles and lines can be labelled by journal by ticking the corresponding boxes in the scroll menu located in the bottom right corner of the chart.

Click here for the data

Ever wondered who are the BIG names in the IMS/MS literature? Want to know how your publishing record stacks up against your colleagues? Well, look no further. We have performed an analysis of the author lists from the available FAIMS and T-wave journal articles and visualized the result in the form of a Wordle (go to www.wordle.net to make your own). The bigger the font size of the name the greater the number of papers they have appeared on.

FAIMS-MS authors	Traveling Wave-MS authors

A good collection of papers about IMS/MS can be found on Mendeley - in fact, there's a group dedicated to it.

It's called Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry - Hardware and is looked after by Jakub Ujma, University of Edinburgh.

Embedded below you can see the 5 latest papers shared into the group.

A couple of upcoming conferences on mass spectrometry will feature IMS/MS.

ISIMS 2012:

Presentations/posters include:

• Real-time Detection Of Sub-ppt Explosive Vapors With An Atmospheric Drift Tube Mass Spectrometer
• Direct Analysis Of Potentially Genotoxic Impurities In Drug Substances Using Miniaturized Asymmetric Waveform Ion Mobility Spectrometry

• Evaluation of the performance of microscale FAIMS for enhancement of quantitative analysis of metabolites and peptides
• Session 10: Ion Mobility Spectroscopy Based on Instrument & Theoretical Development
• Session 11: Advances in Ion Mobility Mass Spectrometry
• Workshop 5: Path to next generation IMS: new concepts, advanced instrumentation, and leveraging the ion-molecule chemistry

Do you know of more IMS/MS presence at upcoming events?

Let us know through the LinkedIn Group and we'll keep updating this blog as well.