Mass Spectrometers

Research from University of Leicester sniffs-out smell of disease in feces.

Criminals are smuggling an estimated $30 billion in U.S. currency into Mexico each year from the United States, but help could be on the way for border guards, researchers reported recently. The answer to the problem: a portable device that identifies specific vapors given off by U.S. paper money.

The UPC2/MS FFA analysis described here provides a simple and fast method with a significant reduction in analysis time compared to alternative techniques such as GC/MS, which requires FAME derivatization.

Amrita Cheema, PhD, associate professor and codirector of the Proteomics and Metabolomics Shared Resource at Georgetown University Medical Center, talks to contributing editor Tanuja Koppal, PhD, about the growing use of mass spectrometry as a tool for detecting biomarkers for early prediction and diagnosis of disease, leading to personalized therapy. She highlights that improvements in software
and hardware have led to better resolution and specificity, which in turn have increased the use of this technology for biomarker discovery and will potentially help pave its path into the clinic as a diagnostic tool.










