Discover clinical mass spectrometry career paths. This networking event is geared to early career attendees, but open to all.

Get insights through informative, brief presentations on various job profiles within clinical mass spectrometry. Experts and seasoned professionals will guide you through diverse roles, making it easier to envision your own journey in this exciting industry.

In addition to short panelist presentations, the event promises a delightful networking experience. Unwind and engage with fellow attendees, experts, and potential employers to expand your professional connections. Enjoy selections of refreshments; creating a relaxed environment for further discussion and relationship-building. This networking event is the perfect opportunity to continue conversations, ask questions, and make lasting connections.

Employers

This is your chance to connect with talent. We invite you to advertise your job postings at the event and interact with potential candidates who are passionate about clinical mass spectrometry. Share your opportunities and meet prospective candidates who are eager to contribute to your organization's success.

MSACL is offering the opportunity for you to be recognized by the event chair at no charge (RSVP required) to facilitate your discussion of career opportunities with interested parties in attendance.

If you are interested in representing your organization/company/lab at this event, please register your interest here.

This event is formatted as a social mixer to facilitate active networking throughout the event.

For representatives and hiring managers:

-> There will be no booths.

-> Please bring business cards or QR codes describing positions to share with attendees or place on the job board.

-> You may also advertise employment opportunities on a job board. Each open position is limited to an 8.5 x 11 inch poster.

Don’t miss this unique opportunity to blend career exploration, networking, and relaxation.

This gap has important consequences. Many of the most pressing African health challenges including cardiometabolic disorders, infectious diseases, cancers, and inflammatory conditions would benefit from molecularly informed approaches that improve disease understanding, patient stratification, and therapeutic development. However, limited local capacity for advanced mass spectrometry–based research and clinical translation means that African patient populations, disease phenotypes, and biological samples are rarely investigated using these technologies. As a result, the molecular knowledge that underpins diagnostics and therapeutic development is often generated elsewhere, creating a persistent disconnect between disease burden and discovery.

This discussion session provides an opportunity to examine the unique challenges and opportunities for translating mass spectrometry–based technologies into clinical and healthcare contexts in Africa. By convening researchers from established international centres alongside emerging African initiatives, the session aims to explore how clinical mass spectrometry can be developed in resource-constrained environments, what infrastructure and training models are needed to build sustainable local capacity, and how equitable partnerships can support meaningful clinical impact.

Addressing these questions is essential if advances in mass spectrometry are to contribute meaningfully to global health rather than reinforce existing inequities in biomedical discovery and translation.

Summary

Clinical mass spectrometry has historically focused on absolute quantification of single analytes, with well-established conventions around calibration, QC, and regulatory expectations.

However, clinical innovation is moving toward multi-marker panels and composite score outputs that incorporate algorithmic interpretation. This is already occurring in the research and translational literature for LC-MS-based proteomic panels, where multiple proteins are combined into predictive models or classifier outputs for disease detection, triage, or risk stratification. While these approaches show promise, they challenge the field because the final clinical result is not a concentration but a probability score or classification.

This shift raises important questions on the validation metrics for clinical mass spectrometry-based multivariate index assays:

• What does analytical validation look like for a score without external calibration and absolute quantification?
• What are the appropriate QC metrics?
• How do labs demonstrate traceability, reproducibility, and medical decision limits?
• At what point does validation move beyond metrology toward clinical calibration?

By comparing traditional targeted assays with emerging score-based LC-MS panels, this roundtable aims to identify best practices and highlight gaps in current clinical, regulatory, and quality frameworks for translating these novel assays.

The session is intended as a neutral, field-level discussion of translational challenges as the community navigates this next frontier of clinical mass spectrometry, not promotion of any specific product.

Ion mobility-mass spectrometry (IM-MS) is now a ubiquitous technique in biomedical research, with nearly all major MS vendors offering one or more commercially-available IM options. Nevertheless, its transition into the “prime-time” of clinical analysis has been slowed by numerous challenges, not the least of which being difficult/cumbersome data analysis. In this workshop, we will briefly introduce the various IM techniques and their deliverables, ranging from drift/arrival time to mobility (K) and collision cross section (CCS). We will then focus on real datasets (applicable to the clinical lab) and discuss how/where ion mobility can be beneficial. Finally, we will present several “open-source” IM data processing software options and also how these and other tools could be integrated into a clinical lab data processing workflow.

Syllabus

• Basic introduction to different IMS techniques
• Discussion of deliverables from the IMS techniques: how they are measured/validated, what they reveal about chemistry/structure, and how they support separations
• Demonstration of data‑processing tools for IM‑MS datasets

1. Understand the basic operating principles of IMS and the differences between the different techniques (e.g., drift tube, traveling wave, FAIMS/DMS, etc.)
2. Understand the deliverables of the various techniques (drift/arrival time, compensation voltage, mobility, collision cross section, etc.)
3. Understand the basics of an ion mobility data analysis workflow, how it can be applied to different data sets, and the benefits of incorporating IM into existing LC‑MS experiments

Summary

In 2026 the MSACL Compliance and Accreditation Committee is forming several new Working Groups (WG) to help clinical mass spectrometry laboratories tackle compliance, quality and training challenges. These groups focus on creating practical resources to support accreditation, regulatory compliance, quality management, and workforce development. We’re gathering input from the MSACL community to identify gaps and prioritize projects. Future outcomes from these workgroups may include but are not limited to continuing education sessions; white papers; position statements; publications; templates for quality and compliance procedures, policies, and job aids; quality management software discussions; implementation and accreditation case histories.

The session will include a brief presentation, followed by Q&A and discussion. Topics to be covered include:

• Update and overview of each CAC workgroup
• Current WG membership, expectations for members, and how to get involved
• Projects in progress in 2026
• Projects planned for late 2026 and 2027
• Wish list for programs and materials from attendees – where are the gaps?

• Brief review of different flavours of mass spectrometry based spatial –omics of FFPE samples
• Principle of direct (‘top-down’) spatial MS analysis with ambient MS (MALDI and DESI)
• Different HR MS analyzers coupled to atmospheric pressure ion sources: from TOFs to FT instruments
• FFPE
  • chemistry of formaldehyde fixation
  • physics of paraffin embedding
  • comparison with cryo
• FFPE sample origin (Homo sapiens), circumvention animal model species, ethical considerations
• Further processing options of FFPE samples for MSI (“MSHC”) tailored to (bio)molecules to be detected
  • proteomics (peptidomics)
  • metabolomics
  • lipidomics
• Dataset examples
  • Data structure from MSI dataset
  • Mass spectra: peak resolution and mass accuracy
  • Profile and centroid mass spectrum
  • Pre-processing : peak picking (untargeted or targeted approach) and peak aligment in MSI
  • Normalization: TIC vs RMS
  • Ion image : heat map color codes and color code scale bar
  • Multivariate analysis: spatial clustering and spatial PCA
  • Region of interest and get mean intensities values for downstream analysis
  • from histological annotations to mean spectrum: use of imaging data for downstream analysis in a clinical context
• More advanced MSHC approaches: tandem MSI, ion mobility MSI,...
• Future (and today’s) developments: Mining rich pathology archives (well-documented FFPE tissue biobank)
• Conclusion: Advantages / Disadvantages; Limits / Potential

Summary

Unlike small drug molecules, the monoclonal antibody therapies often lack a well-defined maximum tolerated dose, have delayed pharmacodynamic responses, and cause the formation of anti-drug antibodies. Despite these challenges, TDM has shown clinical benefits for tyrosine kinases inhibitors suggesting the potential in Oncology. This session will discuss the challenges and considerations of using mass spectrometry to measure concentrations of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1) inhibitors (e.g. Pembrolizumab, Nivolumab, etc.), a class of immunotherapy drugs that have revolutionized the treatment of various malignancies, to minimize toxicity and maximize efficacy.