Welcome to the conference!
The ongoing single-cell revolution and the rise of single-cell -omics approaches, in particular, single-cell RNA-sequencing highlighted by Science as the Breakthrough of the Year in 2018, have revealed to us the hidden world of cellular heterogeneity, novel cell types, and cell population dynamics. The discoveries enabled by these technologies are transforming our understanding of biology and medicine by decoupling functions, phenotype, and types of individual cells. Most of these single-cell approaches are based on sequencing, flow cytometry, and microscopy, which have a common limitation in that they cannot capture, track, or elucidate the molecular makeup of cells with respect to their proteome, lipidome or metabolome. Single-cell mass spectrometry is emerging as a necessary, valuable, and longdemanded technology to bridge this critical gap. Until very recently, single-cell mass spectrometry was out of reach due to limitations in sample preparation, separations, and MS instrumentation. However, in the past years, several key technological breakthroughs opened the field of single-cell mass spectrometry for much wider development and use. For example, sensitivity improvements in MS instrumentation through gains in ion transmission and utilization efficiency have resulted in zeptomole detection limits that are compatible with in-depth, untargeted single-cell biochemical analysis. In addition, imaging mass spectrometry approaches have reached single-cell resolution, enabling in situ detection of metabolites, lipids, and drugs in single cultured cells as well as single-cell regions in tissue sections. Presently, there is an exponential growth of single-cell approaches in mass spectrometry. Numerous studies have demonstrated the metabolome, lipidome or proteome to be characteristic for the cell type, and how it is changed upon perturbation. Overall, by now there is a growing and enthusiastic community of single-cell mass spectrometry method developers and those who are driven by applications of single-cell mass spectrometry biology and medicine. Our aim for this conference is to bring together scientists interested in all aspects of single-cell mass spectrometry, from academia and industry including mass spectrometry vendors, big pharma, and small and medium enterprises developing instrumentation, software, services and applications. We have included ample time for Q&A and interactions between all attendees. We hope you to take the opportunity to engage, learn, and connect.
-- Conference Organizer
