If you take a handful of dirt from the roadside, it contains PFAS. The challenge isn't finding forever chemicals — it's finding all of them. Standard monitoring methods cover 40 to 50 PFAS species. Thousands more go completely unmeasured. That's the gap Dr. Viktoria Müller has spent her career trying to close.Viktoria is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Graz specializing in PFAS environmental fate, transport, and the fluorine mass balance. Her work spans ski slopes, rivers, wastewater treatment plants, bees, wild deer, shrimp, and the Ganges River — and it has made international headlines. In this episode, she breaks down what we're missing, why routine analysis creates a false sense of security, and what wildlife can tell us that instruments alone cannot.In this episode:- [00:01:30] Why PFAS is unavoidable — and what you can actually control- [00:02:00] The pizza box explanation: how Viktoria describes PFAS to non-scientists- [00:04:00] How her research path built from soil → ski slopes → snowmelt → rivers → wildlife- [00:05:00] What "closing the fluorine mass balance gap" actually means for environmental monitoring- [00:06:50] Ski wax and the 99% problem: targeted PFAS analysis only identified less than 1% of the total organofluorine in ski wax — what is the rest?- [00:11:00] LC-MS/MS vs. ICP-MS/MS vs. CIC for PFAS and fluorine analysis — and which one Viktoria would buy ("don't blame me later")- [00:18:50] TOP assay vs. ozonation: same precursor, different breakdown products — what that means for anyone relying on TOP assay data- [00:21:00] Honeybees as short-term local PFAS sentinels — and how a beekeeper biologist changed how Viktoria interpreted her own data- [00:24:00] Collectors or house cleaners? How to tell whether an animal is accumulating PFAS or just carrying it on the surface- [00:25:30] The roe deer liver study: 87% drop in PFAS from 1998 to 2022 — bans work, but the industry keeps replacing regulated compounds with unregulated ones- [00:33:00] Wastewater treatment plants downstream: more PFAS species coming out than going in — and what the mass balance approach revealed about why- [00:37:00] Personal aside: Viktoria's one regret about not taking her own blood sample before she started working with PFAS- [00:39:30] What's next: a funded proposal exploring PFAS in clouds and atmospheric chemistry — a topic almost no one is working onConnect with Dr. Viktoria Müller:Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Prq41XUAAAAJ&hl=enLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktoria-m%C3%BCller-8a1843a7/About Organomation:Organomation manufactures nitrogen blowdown evaporators and nitrogen generators used in PFAS sample preparation workflows, including EPA Methods 533, 537.1, and 1633. Learn more at organomation.com. @ChromatographyTalk is proudly produced by @Organomation #PFAS #ForeverChemicals #AnalyticalChemistry #EnvironmentalChemistry #MassSpectrometry #Chromatography

In this episode of Concentrating on Chromatography, David Oliva and co‑host Candi Gokey sit down with Dr. Pierre‑Hugues (PH) Stefanuto to explore how comprehensive GC×GC‑TOFMS breathomics is reshaping asthma research and personalized medicine. PH shares his journey from forensic applications (yes, even the “smell of death”) to non‑invasive exhaled breath analysis for chronic lung inflammation, and why he believes asthma is the perfect playground to translate breath research into real clinical impact.We dig into PH’s recent work on a complete GC×GC‑TOFMS workflow to improve asthma monitoring, including patient breath collection, VOC analysis, biomarker discovery, and robust data processing strategies. He explains how combining targeted markers like FeNO with VOC “breathprints” can improve asthma phenotyping and treatment decisions, and how his group identified potential VOC biomarkers such as hexane, 1‑propanol, 2‑hexanone, undecane, and nonanal.A major theme of this conversation is PH’s call to “fight the breath proof‑of‑concept paradigm.” Instead of stopping at small, under‑powered studies, his group pushes through large cohorts, rigorous validation, and clinically relevant study design so that breath analysis can actually make it into the clinic and, eventually, into patients’ homes. We also talk candidly about skepticism toward breath analysis, how overpromising has hurt the field, and what it takes to rebuild trust with clinicians and medical staff.We also cover:Why the Multidimensional Chromatography Workshop (MDCW) was designed to be a free, open‑access event, and how that philosophy supports open science, networking, and inclusion of early‑career scientists and lab staff.PH’s path from forensic GC×GC to clinical breathomics and chronic inflammation research, and how CSI‑inspired curiosity turned into a career in analytical chemistry.How untargeted molecular screening and rich VOC fingerprints complement conventional single‑marker tests and enable finer‑grained patient phenotyping.Why GC×GC‑MS often achieves higher annotation rates than LC‑MS in certain metabolomics applications, thanks to retention patterns, EI libraries (NIST/Wiley), and structured 2D chromatography.The future vision: patients blowing into a simple device (or even a phone‑connected system) to monitor lung inflammation at home, integrate with wearables and environmental data, and guide day‑to‑day asthma management.How AI and machine learning can help connect small‑molecule breath data to larger metabolic pathways and multi‑omics datasets, inspired in part by platforms like GNPS.PH’s thoughts on chromatography education, why analytical chemistry is underrepresented in curricula, and how we should prepare the next generation of clinicians and scientists for omics‑driven healthcare.If you’re interested in chromatography, mass spectrometry, breath analysis, asthma, or translational metabolomics, this is a deep yet accessible conversation that bridges instrumentation, statistics, and real‑world clinical needs.Keywords: breathomics, exhaled breath analysis, asthma monitoring, GCxGC, GC×GC‑TOFMS, multidimensional chromatography, volatile organic compounds, VOC biomarkers, untargeted metabolomics, personalized medicine, PH Stefanuto, Pierre‑Hugues Stefanuto, MDCW, Multidimensional Chromatography Workshop, FeNO, chronic lung inflammation, clinical mass spectrometry, analytical chemistry education, chromatography podcast, Concentrating on Chromatography, David Oliva, Candi Gokey

In this episode of Concentrating on Chromatography, host David Oliva is joined for the first time by co-host Candice (Candi) Gokey — PhD candidate at UC San Diego / San Diego State University and expert in LC-MS/MS method development for untargeted metabolomics to interview Jacob Russell, a third-year PhD student in the Riley Research Group at the University of Washington (Seattle).Jacob's research sits at the frontier of mass spectrometry based intact glycoproteomics, where the goal is to keep glycans attached to peptides during analysis — preserving the biological information that is lost when glycans are enzymatically removed. His lab, led by Prof. Nick Riley, develops new methods to tackle every stage of glycoproteomic analysis, from sample preparation and enrichment through data acquisition and bioinformatics.🔬 WHAT WE COVER:• What is the glycocalyx, and why does glycoproteomics matter for cancer, immunity, and protein biology?• N-linked vs. O-linked glycosylation: why they require completely different fragmentation strategies (HCD vs. ETD/EThcD)• Autonomous Dissociation-type Selection (ADS): how real-time library searching (RTLS) of oxonium ion ratios (m/z 138 vs. 144) enables on-the-fly selection of the right fragmentation method for N- vs. O-glycopeptides — published in J. Proteome Research (Sutherland, Veth, Russell et al., 2024)• How XGBoost machine learning outperforms RTLS by classifying ~50 oxonium ions simultaneously, recovering Core 2 O-glycopeptides that the simpler ratio-based method misses• Casanovo Foundation: a transformer-based foundation model for tandem mass spectra and how deep learning is reshaping glycopeptide classification (Sanders et al., arXiv 2025)• LacNAc-ase enabled glycoproteomics: using endo-β-galactosidase (EBG) to "trim" poly-LacNAc chains on N-glycans — uncovering previously undetectable glycoforms (ASMS 2026 presentation)• Cutaneous vs. uveal melanoma: comparing poly-LacNAcylated glycoproteins (including galectin-3 binding partners like CD63, LAMP-2, and basigin) between cell lines — and why uveal melanoma has a ~50% distant metastasis rate vs. ~5% for cutaneous • The future of intelligent data acquisition and real-time mass spectrometry• Candi's parallel world of untargeted metabolomics, coral-algae chemical communication, and GNPS/MassQL — and the surprising overlap with glycoproteomics🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED:• Riley Research Group at UW: https://www.riley-research.com/• ADS Paper: Sutherland, Veth, Russell et al., J. Proteome Res. 2024, 23, 5606–5614• Casanovo Foundation: Sanders et al., arXiv 2025• GlyCounter software (Riley Lab, UW)• XGBoost (Chen & Guestrin, UW)• GNPS / MassQL (Dorrestein Lab, UCSD)👥 GUESTS:Jacob H. Russell — PhD Student, Dept. of Chemistry, University of Washington | Riley Research Group | Glycoproteomics | Mass Spectrometry | Machine LearningCo-host: Candice Gokey — PhD Candidate, UC San Diego / San Diego State University | LC-MS/MS Method Development | Untargeted Metabolomics | Coral Reef Holobiont Research🎙️ HOST: David Oliva | @ChromatographyTalk | @Organomation | @SeparationScience collaborator━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🔔 Subscribe for more interviews with researchers and industry leaders in analytical chemistry, chromatography, and mass spectrometry.#Glycoproteomics #MassSpectrometry #Chromatography #AnalyticalChemistry #MachineLearning #Glycans #Proteomics #Cancer #UVealMelanoma #LCMS #OxoniumIons #ETD #XGBoost #RileyLab #UniversityOfWashington #PodcastScience #Metabolomics```