Symposium report of the “25th Montreux symposium on LC/MS” , the Silver edition


Symposium report of the “25th Montreux Symposium on LC/MS” , the Silver edition

The 25th Montreux symposium on LC/MS was held from November 12-14 in the Montreux music & convention Centre (2m2c) in Montreux, Switzerland. Approximately 453 participants from 31 countries all over the world gathered in the beautiful surroundings of Montreux. The diversity of participants demonstrated how the technology has become wide spread during the history of the symposium, and the technology maturity is reflected by the change from mainly academic in the early eighties to a more industrial participation today. It illustrated the great view on analytical chemistry and LC/MS by Roland Frei, when he initiated this symposium series at a time that nobody could foresee the importance as we experience it today.

The conference was preceded with traditional two day courses on the basics of “Practical LC/MS” and the “Advanced interpretation of CID mass spectra from LC/MS/MS” by Henion and Voyksner, and with 3 half-day courses on “LC/MS adequate clean-up of biofluids”, Multivariate statistics” and “Metabolomics: challenges and opportunities for analytical chemistry” by Boos, Hankemeier and Reimers. This set of courses provided newcomers the opportunity to build their expertise to a level which enabled them to get the best out of the symposium and the extensive exhibition.

The opening of the symposium was done by the chairman of the symposium Jan van der Greef and the president of the IAEAC, Dieter Klockow, followed by two lectures to celebrate the silver edition. The traditional opening lecture, the so-called “Roland W. Frei” lecture, was given by Ruedi Aebersold from the Institute of Systems Biology from the ETH in Zurich in Switzerland, and his excellent lecture was entitled “LC-MS/MS Methods for the Discovery and Measurement of the Proteome”. Ruedi Aebersold as one of the most outstanding scientists in the field of proteomics and systems biology provided the audience an insight into the cutting edge field of proteomics and described novel technologies developed to answer major biological challenges with a spin-off in a broad area of Life Sciences. He demonstrated the limitations of the shotgun approach and the advantages of using directed LC-MS/MS strategies in particular if the current knowledge of biology is used to generate inclusion list sequencing.

The second part of the opening session was focused on the silver aspect of the symposium by an outstanding lecture entitled “A Historical Perspective of the Montreux LC/MS Symposium: Then, Now and the Future” delivered by Jack Henion, one of the most prominent researchers in LC/MS from the very beginning. He described the various stages of LC/MS developments presented during the symposium since the first official edition in 1981 and discussed the histomap of LC/MS based on a recent overview by Tom Covey, another forerunner in the field. A comprehensive insight in the research and symposium atmosphere from the past until now was sketched for the attendees of the symposium and served as a basis for an inspiring view on the technology wish list for the future.

This silver edition comprised a special session on metabolomics organized together with the metabolomics society. This timely topic in -OMICS approaches and systems biology comprised overviews on the analytical and statistical issues and opportunities in pharmaceutical discovery developments by keynote lectures of Thomas Hankemeier and Ina-Schuppe Koistinen with focus on biomarker discovery related to safety issues and personalized health care. The extensive initiative of the Netherlands Metabolomics Center was outlined and demonstrated the potential and need to improve coverage and identification strategies. Additional topics in this session were targeted metabolomics, peptidomics, natural products profiling as well as technologies such as high resolution mass spectrometry and ultra high speed microfluidic approaches. Miniaturization gains considerable interest in areas where sample volumes are small or available samples are very valuable. The application of global and targeted metabolomics in combination was demonstrated. The need for novel identification strategies emphasized the urgent need for improvement in this very challenging and time-consuming process.

Various “-omics” papers were presented varying from novel strategies and technologies to addressing the application and valorization of these findings in various industrial application domains. The pharmaceutical research applications in the drug discovery area as well as the pre-clinical toxicology (safety) and pharmacology research were mainly focused on biomarker discovery, while in the clinical research most emphasis was on the validation and use of biomarkers. Attention was also paid to further development towards diagnostics.

The omics-technology was addressed from a systems perspective by Jan van der Greef who addressed key issues in biology such as homeostatic regulation, resilience and disease development, chronobiology and psychology. In addition the option for integration of Eastern and Western perspectives were addressed via scientific understanding of traditional Chinese Medicine and translated in novel options for pharmaceutical and nutrition research in life sciences. This resulted in a target list for further technology developments and it emphasized the need to integrate biological knowledge in the experimental design and the software development.

Environmental challenges in aerosol-cloud-climate interactions related to climate changes were discussed by Thorsten Hoffmann from the analytical perspective, and the role of various LC/MS techniques was addressed. In addition a number of environmental presentations addressed new selectivity and sensitivity, multi-target screening as well as unusual applications as anabolic and doping residuals in municipal waste water.

Sample preparation and separation methodology was again a highlight in the event. Phase-optimized liquid chromatography (POPLC) as tailor-made LC/MS option was elegantly presented by Carl-Siegfried Boos and Stefan Lamotte. This approach is based on a set of 5 experiments with orthogonal bonded phases with the same mobile phase, which generates via a software module the optimized column composition using the prisma model concept, and the final solution is subsequently realized with a unique cartridge system.

Furthermore, restricted-access materials, turbulent-flow chromatography, HILIC, UPLC, automated whole blood analysis via a cell-disintegrated blood step with SPE-LC/MS/MS, field flow fractionation, and functionalized ferromagnetic micro-particles and liquid-liquid electro-extraction were addressed.

A special session was also devoted to new breaking news by vendors where dual-source, novel triple-quad, LTQ-orbitrap technologies, fast-FIA-MS/MS detection were presented as well as new developments in separation science such as HILIC, and sub 2µm UHPLC to perfectly match the hyphenated LC/MS methodology. New mass spectrometry technologies were as always an important focal point of the symposium in the oral and poster presentations. (Parallel) Ion mobility mass spectrometry was gaining interest, atmospheric pressure free liquid infrared matrix assisted laser dispersion ionization and novel findings in protein analysis were presented as well.

The program, also reflected in the origin of attendees, demonstrate major focus on pharmaceutical, medical and biotech (especially therapeutic proteins) applications followed by nutrition and environmental issues as well as life sciences in general. New interest in natural products as for example in Hoodia gordonii and traditional Chinese medicine was demonstrated using the latest technologies combined with multivariate statistics.

New direct and high throughput approaches for automation were an important topic and new developments were demonstrated such as DESI and DART technology, but also direct infusion LC/MS and others such as dried blood spot analysis for clinical trials, hot-source induced dissociation, mudpitt applications in proteomics mapping, multi-source drug discovery, automated processing of whole blood, ultra-fast switching between different ionization modes, and parallel multi-detection modes (UV, ELSD, CLND),

The “Roland W. Frei” poster award was on behalf of the poster-award committee (Nielen, Voyksner, Boos) presented by Dieter Klockow as president of the IAEAC and was granted to Magdalena Biesaga from the University of Warsaw, Poland, for her poster on “Historical and archaeological textiles: an insight on degradation products of wool yarns”, which was based on a collaboration with the University of Pisa in Italy.

The seemingly never-ending new inventions in the field of mass spectrometry makes us look forward to the next events, the 26th symposium at Cornell University, Ithaca/NY, USA, from July 20-24, 2009, organized by Jack Henion, and the 27th edition again at Montreux, Switzerland, November 10-12, 2010.

(Footnote: The 26th symposium was canceled)
Jan van der Greef
Chairman