Stamatios Giannoukos, Chuan Ping Lee, Mohamed Tarik, Christian Ludwig, Serge Biollaz, Houssni Lamkaddam, Urs Baltensperger, Andre Stephan Henry Prevot, and Jay Slowik

Metal emissions are of major environmental and practical concern because of their highly toxic effects on human health and ecosystems. Current technologies available in the market for their detection are typically limited by a time resolution of 1 h or longer (e.g., via semicontinuous X-ray fluorescence measurements) or are nonquantitative (e.g., laser ablation mass spectrometry). In this work, we report the development of a novel technique for the real-time detection and monitoring of metal particles in situ using an extractive electrospray ionization (EESI) source coupled to a high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS)…

Tobias Bruderer; Thomas Gaisl; Martin T. Gaugg; Nora Nowak; Bettina Streckenbach; Simona Müller; Alexander Moeller; Malcolm Kohler; Renato Zenobi*

On-line analysis of exhaled breath offers insight into a person’s metabolism without the need for sample preparation or sample collection. Due to its noninvasive nature and the possibility to sample continuously, the analysis of breath has great clinical potential

Martin Thomas Gaugg

Respiratory diseases are among the leading causes of death worldwide and pose a great financial burden on the health care system. During the last decades the medical community has started to recognize that a patient’s individual set of genes, along with environmental factors, are immensely important for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. This has led to a strong drive towards further developments in personalized and evidencebased medicine. Understanding the underlying metabolic fundamentals of diseases is crucial to provide the appropriate patient care.One of the fastest methods to obtain new insights in this regard is to analyze metabolites in exhaled breath, which offers a non-invasive window into human metabolism, and which can be monitored in real time.

K.Dev Singh, G. Tancev, F. Decrue, J. Usemann, R. Appenzeller, P.Barreiro, G. Jaumà, M. Macia Santiago, G. Vidal de Miguel, U.Frey, P. Sinues

Despite the attractiveness of breath analysis as a non-invasive means to retrieve relevant metabolic information, its introduction into routine clinical practice remains a challenge.

Martin Thomas Gaugg, Anna Engler, Lukas Bregy, Yvonne Nussbaumer-Ochsner, Lara Eiffert, Tobias Bruderer, Renato Zenobi, Pablo ML Sinues and Malcolm Kohler.

BackgroundCollagen-related amino acids are significantly increased in exhaled breath of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) patients compared with healthy controls. The detection of these amino acids using real-time breath analysis results in a good discrimination between the groups, indicating the possibility for a rapid, non-invasive screening for IPF.

Lukas Bregy, Constanze Hirsigerb, Stefanie Gartenmann, Tobias Bruderer, Renato Zenobi, Patrick R.Schmidlinb

It has been shown that bacteria in periodontally diseased patients can be recognized by the detection of volatile metabolites in the headspace of saliva by real-time ambient mass spectrometry. The aim of this study was to use this detection method to analyze the oral metabolome in diseased periodontitis patients before and after therapy to monitor disease evolution and healing events.

Martin Thomas Gaugg, Yvonne Nussbaumer-Ochsner, Lukas Bregy, Anna Engler, Nina Stebler, Thomas Gaisl, Tobias Bruderer, Nora Nowak, Pablo ML Sinues, Renato Zenobi and Malcolm Kohler.

BackgroundExacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are defined by acute worsening of respiratory symptoms leading to a change in therapy.