We are very pleased that as a small company (now in its sixth year as a start-up), especially in 2023, we were able to research, publish, train and help partners (in their laboratory and in our laboratory) very extensively on our core topic of non-target screening, but also on instrumental analysis in chromatography (here in particular on SFC) and mass spectrometry. After the year 2022 – with its adverse external circumstances for our laboratory – in 2023 the processable requests increased again continuously, e.g. from the industrial and commercial analytical environment for NTS consulting and NTS products as well as for implementation in our Augsburg laboratory. So we were able to work on many interesting topics, answer new questions and even invest in new analytical instruments.

Research

With the two research projects RIKovery and bee2diversity, we were actually in the final spurt of the project durations in 2023. However, due to various delays in the funding phase, both consortia applied to the respective project sponsors for a cost-neutral extension until 2024, which were also approved in each case. Thus, the individual cooperation groups can now transfer the previously very far-reaching and interesting findings into the real final phase in a concentrated and sustainable manner and validate future opportunities for use. Based on both initiatives, our NTS approaches establish molecular knowledge on industrial wastewater processes (with high salt loads) and on bee pollen-containing samples and flower samples, which we will also make available to other institutions in the future. More information (in German) can be found here here and there was also a first review article (in German) on the bees at the end of 2022.

We are pleased to be able to support the iMolch consortium – funded by the BMBF funding measure LURCH: Sustainable Groundwater Management – starting in March 2023 in the coming years on a subcontract basis with our NTS expertise and with our NTS routine analysis. We wish the consortium every success and insightful investigations and modelling.

As in previous years, in 2023 we made our experience and findings available to various initiatives and committees. For example, we actively supported the IGF project No. 21309 N – “ComScreen” as well as the FH cooperative project “DeepAuthent” (each with advice and analysis data) so that these consortia can transfer their developments into products in a targeted manner.

We also took on industry-related functions, e.g. as a member of the Industrial Council. We were also involved in technical committees and analytical committees, such as the committee ‘Non-Target’ in the Analytical Section and ‘Persistent Mobile and Toxic Substances’ in the Section Emission (both in the Water Chemical Society of the GDCh).

In order to be able to transfer research approaches into routine and industrial application, there are different approaches that can be pursued. In 2023, for example, we were actively involved in the regulatory procedures: DIN NA 119-01-03-02-16 AK “LC-MS/MS-Verfahren”, ISO NP 13808-1 “Non-target screening” – Parts 1/2 and DIN NA 057-08-02-05 AK “Validation concepts for non-targeted methods in analytics”.

And in 2023, we were once again able to bear the seal ‘Innovative through Research’ (awarded by the Stifterverband e.V.).

Publications

2023 was again a very publication-rich year for us. This year we had numerous inquiries from so-called on-the-bench journals and for the first time we published more ‘popular science’ than ‘scientific’ articles. In this way, we will hopefully achieve a further dissemination of knowledge on our routine concepts of polarity-enhanced chromatography as well as non-target screening in laboratories of a wide variety of orientations. For example, there were two scientific research articles (on Semi-Quantification in SFC-MS together with Anneli Kruve and a monitoring concept ‘Target/NTS to PFAS’ (download free of charge until 02/24) together with Hanna Ulrich and colleagues from the Bavarian Environment Agency (Bayerisches LfU) but also five popular scientific articles.

With ‘Beer Statistically Seen’ in the LVT Lebensmittelindustrie (open access download; German) and with ‘Modern Method Development and Use in Environmental Analysis’ in the LABO-Fit for Lab (open access download; German) we were able to place two articles with RPLC-HILIC chromatography (used in the NTS), but also reports on the -described below- ICNTS23 (open access download; German) and the German-language ‘Viewpoint: (Analytical) Chemistry – Is there really a shortage of skilled workers?’ in the G.I.T. Laborfachzeitschrift (open access download; German).

In 2023, it was also important for us to put the chromatography technique ‘SFC’ in the spotlight so that this very great separation technique would continue to advance into the consciousness of the analytical community. For this reason, we have published extensively on this topic and have entered into new collaborations (as can be seen in the ‘Partners’ section below). Our article in the AFIN-TS Forum ‘Supercritical Fluid Chromatography coupled to an Orbitrap Exploris 120 mass spectrometer – Quantitative Viewpoint‘ was published in English as well as in German by Analytik-News as a reprint (open access English – open access Deutsch) and other journals also showed interest in our findings in the SFC. That is why we are currently writing further articles on the application and method development of SFC, so that this separation technology will remain a major topic of our company in 2024.

Furthermore, we presented (among other things as part of our above-mentioned research projects) scientific posters with titles such as ‘Mass Spectrometric Non-Target Screening In Practice – Quo Vadis?’ at Anakon 2023 in Vienna or at the Langenauer Wasserforum. Further, we presented at the ZeroPM Prevention-Workshop in Gothenburg and also at the International Conference on Environmental & Food Monitoring in Amsterdam –ISEAC 2023– this year. If you are interested in the posters, please click here (for the poster from the ZeroPM workshop) or here (for the NTS poster on industrial water recycling) or here here (for the current ‘Quo Vadis’ poster) or here (for the ‘SFC as a NTS-gold standard’ Poster).

Advanced Trainings

In 2023, various certificate courses and seminars in the field of LC-MS, mass spectrometry, DoE and polar molecules took place in cooperation with Springer Campus (as well as Sekulab and other partners). These took place again with numerous participants in the 3x3h format both in spring (Wednesday) and in autumn (Mondays). As a successful format, we will continue these flexible seminars in 2024 and beyond (and some of them will also be offered in English).

In addition, numerous In-House Training Courses on Non-Target Screening lasting several days were held in industrial, university and government laboratories in 2023. The primary interest was in professional water analysis, but other disciplines are also becoming more and more open to this type of analysis, for example, there is currently a great deal of interest in the field of ‘chemical and pharmaceutical process monitoring’ and there is an increasing demand for it.

We train vendor independently and, if necessary, we involve experts from the respective MS vendor in the establishment of systems and software; The same applies to implementation and training in data analysis and statistics.

In addition to our other training and further education concepts in our company (and within the framework of the AGBB of the GdCH; German), a lot of new and hopefully sustainable things took place in 2023. For example, the AGBB of the GDCh has created a training atlas for non-academic training, in which educational institutions can register and trainees can search. This will be a focus of our communication in 2024 and will continue to appear here in one or the other article. You can read about some of our activities in the G.I.T. Laborfachzeitschrift or in Chrom&Food or as als ‘merger’ in own edition.

Conferences