Disclosed are methods for determining the presence of one or more proteins in a sample, the methods comprising: enzymatically digesting the sample with a protease activity to generate a plurality of proteolytic peptides; separating the plurality of proteolytic peptides using liquid chromatography; performing mass spectrometry on the separated plurality of peptides; and wherein a protein is present in the sample when three or more target peptides for the protein are present among the proteolytic peptides; and wherein the target peptides are selected from the groups consisting of SEQ ID NOS:6-8, SEQ ID NOS:9-11, SEQ ID NOS:12-14, SEQ ID NOS:15-17, and SEQ ID NOS:18-20. In embodiments, a known quantity of a standard peptide may be added to the proteolytic peptides.

A method is disclosed for predicting in advance whether a melanoma patient is likely to benefit from high dose IL2 therapy in treatment of the cancer. The method makes use of mass spectrometry data obtained from a blood-based sample of the patient and a computer configured as a classifier and making use of a reference set of mass spectral data obtained from a development set of blood-based samples from other melanoma patients. A variety of classifiers for making this prediction are disclosed, including a classifier developed from a set of blood-based samples obtained from melanoma patients treated with high dose IL2 as well as melanoma patients treated with an anti-PD-1 immunotherapy drug. The classifiers developed from anti-PD-1 and IL2 patient sample cohorts can also be used in combination to guide treatment of a melanoma patient.

A method of analysis using mass spectrometry and/or ion mobility spectrometry is disclosed comprising: (a) using a first device to generate smoke, aerosol or vapour from a target in vitro or ex vivo cell population; (b) mass analysing and/or ion mobility analysing said smoke, aerosol or vapour, or ions derived therefrom, in order to obtain spectrometric data; and (c) analysing said spectrometric data in order to identify and/or characterise said target cell population or one or more cells and/or compounds present in said target cell population.

Provided are methods for determining the amount of thyroglobulin in a sample using various purification steps followed by mass spectrometry. The methods generally involve purifying thyroglobulin in a test sample, digesting thyroglobulin to form peptide T129, purifying peptide T129, ionizing peptide T129, detecting the amount of peptide T129 ion generated, and relating the amount of peptide T129 ion to the amount of thyroglobulin originally present in the sample.

Systems and methods are provided for microbial identification using cleavable tags. Control information is sent to a mass spectrometer to fragment one or more nucleic acid primers labeled with a first tag and monitor for an intensity of the first tag in a mass spectrometry (MS) method. An ion source provides a beam of ions from a polymerase chain reaction amplified sample that includes one or more nucleic acid primers labeled with the first tag. The first tag binds to one or more nucleic acid primers of a known microbe and is cleaved from the nucleic acid primers during the MS method. The mass spectrometer receives the beam of ions and is adapted to perform the MS method on the beam of ions. If the intensity of the first tag received from the mass spectrometer exceeds a threshold value, the known microbe is identified in the sample.

In a system for affinity selection by mass spectrometry, wherein a plurality of drug candidates in solution are separated based on affinity, a method is provided comprising introducing a solid-phase device having binding affinity for a selected protein into the solution, binding at least one of the plurality of drug candidates to the solid-phase device as a selected drug candidate, washing the solid-phase device and selected drug candidate to separate unbound material, sampling the selected drug candidate in capture fluid flowing through a sampling region of an open port sampling interface and directing the sampled selected drug candidate and capture fluid to an ionization source.

The present invention relates to a method for diagnosing esthetic degradations of skin, in particular linked to pollution, in a subject, comprising a step (a) of determining, in a skin sample of the subject, the level of at least one marker chosen from the group constituted of (i) bacteria of the species Propionibacterim acnes, bacteria of the family Micrococcaceae, bacteria of the genus Brachybacterium, bacteria of the genus Brevibacterium, bacteria of the order Burkholderiales, bacteria of the genus Parococcus, bacteria of the family Rhodobacteraceae and bacteria of the genus Fusobacterium, and (ii) metabolites of these bacteria chosen from 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutarate, 3-methylglutarate/2-methylglutarate, 4-guanidinobutanoate, 4-imidazoleacetate, 5-oxoproline, aconitrate, adipate, alanine, alpha-cetoglutarate, arabonate/xylonate, azelate, beta-citrylglutamate, choline, cis-urocanate, citraconate/glutaconate, fructose, fumarate, gamma-glutamylalanine, gamma-glutamylglutamine, gamma-glutamylglycine, gamma-glutamylisoleucine, gamma-glutamylleucine, gamma-glutamylsérine, gamma-glutamylthréonine, gamma-glutamyltryptophane, gamma-glutamylvaline, glutarate, glycerate, glycerol-3-phosphate, glycine, isovalerylglycine, kynurenate, lactate, linoleoyl ethanolamide, malate, maleate, malonate, maltose, methionine sulfoxide, methylsuccinate, N-acetylalanine, N-acetylarginine, N-acetylaspartate, N-acetylglycine, N-acetylhistidine, N-acetylphenylalanine, N-acetylthréonine, N-acetylvaline, oleamide, ornithine, palmitamide, pimelate, proline, salicylate, sebacate, serine, suberate, succinate, undecanedioate and S-amino-omega caprolactam.

The invention generally relates to methods of screening a sample for cannabinoids.

The invention provides assays and methods for detecting and monitoring systemic inflammation Particularly, the invention in embodiments thereof relates to the use of urinary biomarkers for non-invasive determination of the level of inflammation.

Systems and methods are provided for the analysis of single particles with inductively coupled plasma-time of flight mass spectrometry. An ion compression device is operated in combination with an image current detector to improve a duty cycle of particle analysis. The image current detection device is used to determine a start time and an end time of a separate ion cloud which is derived from a single particle. The ion compression device stores and compresses each ion cloud based on instructions from the image current detector. The duty cycle of the particle analysis can be improved up to nearly 100%. The ion compression device is additionally operated with an ion filtration device to achieve a lower detection limit and a higher signal-to-noise ratio.