Frontline researchers to Uppsala for international MSI workshop

(Image removed)

27–29 March, the Regional Mass Spectrometry Imaging Spring Workshop 2023 is arranged in Uppsala Konsert & Kongress. The meeting will bring together several frontline researchers in Mass Spectrometric Imaging, MSI, among them Richard Caprioli, MSI pioneer and director of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine (US), who will give a lecture Monday 27 March at 18.15.

“This meeting is a joint arrangement between the Swedish Pharmaceutical Society and the newly formed International Mass Spectrometry Imaging Society, IMSIS, uniting researchers in the USA, Asia, Africa and Europe. We have a very high scientific ambition for this workshop, and will present cutting edge innovations and current developments in MSI as well as new applications in various areas,” says Per Andrén, organizer and Professor of Mass Spectrometry Imaging  at Uppsala University.

The program includes lectures by a selection of European and American researchers, discussions and poster sessions. The meeting aims to promote and educate academic, industry and government scientists on the latest applications and innovations in MSI applied to biomedical, biological and data science research areas.

(Image removed) Per Andrén, the Faculty of Pharmacy

“That the Swedish Pharmaceutical Society and IMSIS choose to arrange this workshop in Uppsala is extremely positive for our own MSI facility. We are already among the world's foremost in our field and recently installed a new instrument that has increased both our capacity and the amount of information we can extract from individual tissue samples. That our field is now coming to Uppsala means a unique opportunity to further strengthen our networks and our ability to locate the projects where our work will contribute to optimised outcome in the form of excellent research,” says Per Andrén.

The meeting's priority target groups include both junior and senior researchers in pharmacy, medicine and natural sciences at European universities. PhD students and postdocs within pharmaceutical sciences at Swedish universities are eligible to apply for a scholarship to participate in the workshop until February 10, 2023. Learn more at Swedish Pharmaceutical Society online.

LEARN MORE

• Regional Mass Spectrometry Imaging Spring Workshop 27–29 March 2023
• Research in Medical Mass Spectrometry at Uppsala University
• Advances in spatial mass spectrometry enable in-depth neuropharmacodynamics (Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 2022)

FACTS MSI

• Enables analysis and visualisation of endogenous metabolites, neurotransmitters, lipids, peptides, proteins and drugs and their metabolites in thin tissue sections with high molecular specificity and spatial resolution.
• Molecular images are created by ionizing molecules and collecting mass spectra from each position (pixel) on a tissue surface at a selected lateral resolution. Thousands of ions can be detected in each pixel.
• Computational software is used to select an individual ion, and the intensity of the ion is extracted from each pixel’s mass spectrum. These intensities are then combined into a heat map image showing the relative distribution of the ion throughout the sample’s surface.
• The image can be correlated with a histological image from the same tissue or with images produced with other types of imaging methods from the same or nearby sections of tissue.

CONTACT

(Image removed) Per Andrén, Professor of Mass Spectrometry Imaging 
Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences
per.andren@farmbio.uu.se

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt a o