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21st Annual Meeting of the British Mass Spectrometry Society

University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester, UK

3-6 September 1995

The annual autumnal migration of British mass spectrometrists was this year directed towards UMIST, Manchester, home of the late Professor Michael Barber, fast-atom bombard- ment mass spectrometry and Holts Beer (the latter being the reason for many a sore head during the conference). The event was spread over two full and two half days, divided into sessions covering fundamentals, computer applications, biomedical mass spectrometry, non- covalent interactions and large mole- cule mass spectrometry. The poster ses- sions were similarly divided, but included an extra ‘miscellaneous’ group for the rest of the mass spectrometry world.

As a consequence of the rapid devel- opment of atmospheric pressure and MALDI techniques, the emphasis of this year’s conference appeared to be on biomedical and high mass applications, despite a long gathering of the funda- mentals special interest group one even- ing.

The growing international presence at the meeting culminated with the Maccoll and all six plenary lectures being delivered by overseas delegates, including two plenary lectures from the same lecturer, Prof. R. Smith (Pacific Northwest Labs), reflecting his marked contribution to the field over recent years. The outstanding plenary, in my

opinion, was given by Prof. Hillenkamp (Univ. of Miinster), who provided an excellent appraisal of the current state of MALDI techniques, including the potentially important delayed extrac- tion (DE) method, which seems to supply the enhanced sensitivity and resolution previously lacking in MALDI-TOF. The theme was con- tinued by M. Vestal from PerSeptive Biosystems, who were involved in the development of the DE method.

Other notable presentations included the description of a strategy for the automated analysis and computer simu- lation of mass spectra (Prof. Gasteiger, Univ. of Erlangen-Niirnberg). This involved the use of a type of flow chart of common reactions and fragmen- tations and provided excellent matches for those compounds shown. Dr Wysocki from the Virginia Common- wealth University presented an interest- ing discussion of surface dissociation and charge remote fragmentation tech- niques, and the laser ablation of organic molecules directly from frozen matrices, explained by M. Belov (Univ. of Warwick), showed potential for the ionization of normally difficult mole- cules direct from solution.

The poster sessions were held between the lunch break and the after- noon session on two days of the confer- ence and, with over 85 presentations to view, time was quite limited. A lot of interest was generated by the poster from Interface 2000, a user group who presented the results from a survey of the down time etc. of the various manu- facturers’ instruments a t their disposal. A few company reps were spotted mill- ing around this area.

The current resurgence enjoyed by ion trap mass spectrometry was again evident with numerous papers reporting both theoretical aspects and novel applications.

Researchers from Reading University gave details of a time-saving, fully auto- mated, solid-phase extractionlGCIMS system, allowing injections of up to 200 pL to be made onto the GC column. The quantitative analysis of pesticides

in water was used as an example of the performance achievable.

Amongst the major instrumental advances was the evidence provided by Glaxo and Finnigan that the new Finnigan LCQ benchtop LCIMSIMS instrument could provide similar quan- titative LCIMSIMS performance to a triple quadrupole instrument, suggest- ing that this type of arrangement could soon mirror the popularity of benchtop GCIMS instruments in ‘non-expert’ laboratories.

An LCQ instrument and a flight tube from the new PE Sciex API 300 bench- top LCIMSIMS system were amongst the equipment on show at the exhibition which ran concurrently with the confer- ence.

A glimpse into the future of on-line analysis was provided by a group from Pfizer Central Research, who demon- strated the application of LCINMRIMS to pharmaceutical mixtures. One wonders how long it will be before this technique is reduced to benchtop status?

The answer is, probably not as long as it will take to d o the same with Prof. Smith’s new mind-boggling 12 tesla FT-ICR machine!

Although this meeting did not seem to have as broad a spectrum of content as previous BMSS gatherings, the pres- entations were interesting, well given and well received.

The Michael Barber prize for the best presentation by a young scientist was deservedly won by P. Slater from the EPSRC Mass Spectrometry Centre, Swansea, for a poster detailing the use of base additives to enhance selectivity and sensitivity of ESI towards sulphon- ated compounds.

PAUL COOPER Zeneca Agrochemicals Bracknell UK

(Editor’s note: A selection of research papers presented at the above meeting will appear in the next issue.)