Building Stakeholder Relationships to Facilitate Expanded Application of Non-Targeted Analysis Methods

Collaborative Efforts to Improve Environmental Monitoring (Session 2)
Oral Presentation

Prepared by R. Marfil-Vega1, S. Nason2, Y. Feng3, J. Sobus4, C. Fisher5, K. Pollitt6, M. Newmeyer7
1 - Shimadzu Scientific Instruments, 7102 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD, 21046, United States
2 - The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, , , United States
3 - Health Canada, , , United States
4 - US Environmental Protection Agency, , , United States
5 - U.S. Food and Drug Administration, , , United States
6 - Yale University, , , United States
7 - John Hopkins University, , , United States


Contact Information: [email protected]; 410-910-0884


ABSTRACT

The Benchmarking and Publications for Non-Targeted Analysis (BP4NTA) group, established in 2018 brings together researchers from academia, government, and industry to address challenges related to non-targeted analysis (NTA). NTA and suspect screening using high-resolution mass spectrometry are valuable for a wide range of applications including environmental monitoring, food safety evaluation, human biomonitoring and exposomics, chemical threat detection, and more. While these workflows have been developed and used in research laboratories, there is growing interest for broader implementation in regulatory and commercial environmental laboratories.
Despite global efforts to identify, disseminate, and adopt community-wide definitions, methods, and quality control procedures, there are still foundational knowledge gaps (e.g., procedures for method performance assessment) that hinder the broader use of NTA methods and results. The BP4NTA Stakeholder subcommittee is working to engage with stakeholders from various fields, including environmental laboratories, through a series of meetings, workshops, and surveys where the main goals will be to listen to the attendees, learn about the strongest drivers for NTA adoption, and clarify primary limitations preventing stakeholders from collecting and utilizing NTA data. The subcommittee is further planning to develop instructional materials (e.g., fact sheets and videos) to introduce NTA and fill in common stakeholder knowledge gaps. These resources will be easily accessible through the BP4NTA public website (https://nontargetedanalysis.org/). Outcomes from these initial efforts will establish a framework for enabling broader implementation of NTA workflows and will promote a long-term collaboration with stakeholders for developing guidance materials and creating standardized NTA methods. In this presentation, we will share findings from our engagement activities with stakeholders and show content from the materials we have developed. We hope this presentation will prompt additional feedback so we can further improve these materials and facilitate additional collaborations with stakeholders present at NEMC. Abstract does not necessarily reflect agency policy.