A high-resolution mass spectrometer has been added to the analytical platform of the Chair of Biotechnology CentraleSupélec. It is a TIMS-TOF developed by Bruker, equipped with a high-performance ion mobility cell (IMS), a high-resolution time-of-flight mass analyser (QToF), all coupled to a liquid chromatographic separation (UHPLC). This chemical analysis device allows the quantification of trace compounds in complex biological matrices and provides several identification points for high-throughput screening of unknown or suspected molecules. 

Ion mobility spectrometry subjects the ionised molecules inside the spectrometer to an electric field and manipulates them in a gas stream, mostly in nitrogen. In TIMS, the ions are trapped by an electric field and the nitrogen flow drifts the molecules according to their size and more precisely according to their ion mobility. Two molecules with the same weight but a different spatial arrangement are thus separable in IMS where a standard mass spectrometer cannot distinguish them. In addition, it provides an additional identification point during the analysis, the Collision Cross Section (CCS), which is a property specific to each molecule. 

As the data generated is particularly important (retention time, CCS, the m/z mass of the compound and its isotopic mass and MS/MS fragmentation), the data will then be subjected to statistical processing such as PCA (Principal Component Analysis) to identify the metabolic markers of interest.