We recently had the opportunity to attend the International Single Cell Mass Spectrometry (iSCMS) meeting and the BMSS Single Cell MS Special Interest Group (SIG), two fantastic events organised at King’s College London, bringing together researchers pushing the boundaries of single-cell analysis and mass spectrometry.

Representing the University of Surrey were Dr Catia Costa and PhD students Ahmed Abdelhamed and Kissi Kontor. The meetings featured exciting advances across single-cell proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics and imaging, and provided a great opportunity to connect with the growing international single-cell MS community.

During the meeting, Catia presented Surrey’s new Multimodal Ion Beam Imaging Facility, showcasing how the platform combines high-resolution molecular and elemental imaging to provide new insights into complex biological systems.

The facility even received a memorable shout-out in the News in Proteomics Research conference blog [1]. The author highlighted our use of a custom particle accelerator for imaging experiments and jokingly described Catia’s approach of combining ion beam imaging with follow-up immunohistochemistry, capturing the excitement around the unique capabilities of the new facility.

The events were packed with great science and plenty of discussion about where single-cell mass spectrometry is heading next. We’re excited to bring those ideas back to Surrey as we continue developing new imaging and analytical capabilities for the research community.

Here is what PhD Student Ahmed had to say about his time at the meetings:

“I learned about the actual instruments for transcriptomics and metabolomics and, for sure, the SEISMIC workflow from single-cell isolation, preparing the single-cell, to analysing it for lipidomics and metabolomics. The following three days were amazing, and I enjoyed the talks and discussions. I had a lot of fun at the conference too.”