ABSTRACT

Ambient ionization mass spectrometry (AIMS) is an evolving soft ionization technique that directly snapshots biomolecular profiles, spatial distributions, and chemical changes from biological tissue or fluids with minimal pretreatment. I will first introduce the methodology development of two representative AIMS techniques, namely air-flow-assisted desorption electrospray ionization mass spectrometry imaging (AFADESI-MSI) and conductive polymer spray ionization (CPSI), along with their applications in preclinical anti-tumor drug research and clinical cancer diagnosis. The topic will be then shifted to using AIMS to create water microdroplets, which exhibit ultrafast kinetic and favorable thermodynamic microenvironment differing from equal volume of bulk solution phase. I will introduce my research on AIMS-based microdroplet chemistry for both bioanalysis and synthesis of basic building blocks of life materials.