(Mass Spectrometric) Non Target Screening–Techniques and Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

(mass spectrometric) non-target screening is a preferably comprehensive and untargeted (predominantly organic molecules detecting) approach combining (robust) analytical measurements with adapted data evaluation concepts, systematic compound identification workflows and statistical data interpretation.

It is well suitable for the identification of new, unexpected and/or unknown organic compounds as well as monitoring ‘molecular fingerprints’ and profiling ‘process-relevant’ relevant molecules via statistical methods.

Non-target screening (NTS) provides special benefits for the investigation of complex samples in various disciplines. Even well characterized samples can contain relevant and yet not detected compounds. Depending on the nature of the sample and the aim of the analytics, the presence of such unknown compounds can be of concern and relevance. Non-target screening is a universal technique that can be applied in many areas, such as environmental, forensic, food, metabolomics and other analysis. Since several meetings in 2016 (and later) regarding that topic and many books and publications the NTS topic gains a new level of knowledge and awareness.

Many of them will be presented on the digital workshop ‘Gas Chromatography meets Non-Target Screening’ (see https://afin-ts.de/gc-meets-nts-2022/) to which we want to invite you in November 2022 for an actively participation with a poster and digital discussion groups.

Regarding that conference we ask you to submit also 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, NTS software and platforms as well as data evaluation workflows and other developments in NTS. Several submissions are asked to present a detailed and transparent quality assurance in both, the analytical and data handling performances.

If you are interested to publish your resent developments open-access do not hesitate to contact me.

Dr. Thomas Letzel
Guest Editor

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