The development of rapid screening and identification techniques is of great importance for drug discovery, doping control, forensic identification, food safety and quality control. Ambient mass spectrometry (AMS) allows rapid and direct analysis of various samples in open air with little sample preparation. Recently, its applications in high-throughput screening have been in rapid progress. During the past decade, various ambient ionization techniques have been developed and applied in high-throughput screening. This review discusses typical applications of AMS, including DESI (desorption electrospray ionization), DART (direct analysis in real time), EESI (extractive electrospray ionization), etc., in high-throughput screening (HTS).

A maltose-functionalized metal–organic framework (MOF), MIL-101(Cr)-maltose, was developed via a simple two step post-synthetic modification of MIL-101(Cr)-NH₂. With the use of this nanomaterial, 33 glycopeptides were detected from the digest of human immunoglobulin G, demonstrating its high efficiency in glycoproteomic analysis. More importantly, the generic functionalization route from amino-derived MOFs opens a new perspective in material design in sample preparation.