Analytical Strategies in Molecular Food, Environmental and Biomedical Screening

Dear Colleagues,

Mass spectrometric screening is a preferably comprehensive suspected and/or untargeted  approach (predominantly for the detection of organic molecules) combining robust analytical measurements with adapted data evaluation concepts, systematic compound identification workflows and statistical data interpretation.

It is suitable for the identification of new, expected or unexpected and known or unknown organic compounds, and for the monitoring of molecular fingerprints and profiling process-relevant molecules via statistical methods.

Mass spectrometric screening provides special benefits for the investigation of complex samples in various disciplines, such as the food, environment and biomedical sectors. Even well-characterized samples can contain relevant and yet undetected compounds. Depending on the nature of the sample and the aim of the analytics, the presence of such expected and/or unknown compounds can be of concern and relevance. Non-target and suspect compound screening is a universal technique that can be applied in many areas. Since several meetings in 2016 (and later) regarding that topic and many books and publications to date, the screening topic has reached a new level of knowledge and awareness.

Many of these developments will be presented at the hybrid International Conference on Non-Target Screening (ICNTS 23) in Erding, Germany, and online (see https://afin-ts.de/icnts23/), to which we want to invite you in October 2023 to actively participate with a talk or a poster and much discussion.

Regarding that conference, we also ask that you submit a manuscript for publication in this Special Issue in the Analytical Chemistry section. The focus will not be on the applications themselves, but on the techniques, strategies, screening software and platforms as well as data evaluation workflows and other developments in molecular screening. We seek submissions present detailed and transparent quality assurance in terms of both analytical and data handling performance.

The authors and the Special Issue editors welcome studies reporting results related to the SRT concept (for details see https://nontargetedanalysis.org/srt/) and including this information in the Appendix.

If you are interested in publishing your recent developments in open-access format, do not hesitate to contact me.

Dr. Thomas Letzel
Guest Editor

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