GEN-MKT-18-7897-A
Sep 11, 2018 | Blogs, Forensic | 0 comments
Imagine being blindfolded, sent into a large (dark) room filled with obstacles and challenged to find an item, but you don’t know what that item is, and you have never seen it before. Then you must do the same again the next day, but you are looking for a different item, and it will be in a different place. The phrase fumbling around in the dark comes to mind!
Well, this is what it often feels like for forensic toxicologists trying to keep up with the unpredictable minefield of designer drugs — novel psychoactive substances (NPS).
NPS are synthetic chemicals, whether legal or illegal, closely related to known psychoactive compounds but with slightly altered composition. Not only does this make them difficult to recognize in routine screening, the fact that they are continually evolving – to evade regulation and defy law enforcement efforts — leaves drug screening labs in the dark on what compounds to target.
As if things aren’t tough enough, labs often receive wide varieties of sample types, ranging from blood and urine to hair and oral fluids, with complex biological components and challenging matrices. But it doesn’t stop there, some of these drugs are so potent that users only take a tiny amount, so the drug concentration is very low.
Fumbling around in the dark? Definitely! So, let’s remove the blindfold and shed some light on the matter.
Traditionally drug tests employ a range of targeted methods, and LC-MS/MS is recognized as one of the most efficient and reliable techniques available. The challenge is that these methods can only analyze known substances, limiting drug detection to compounds found on lists of pre-characterized analytes. In other words, if it’s not on the list, it won’t be seen.
How can toxicologists tackle the challenge of never-before-seen drugs? They need a screening tool that can detect trace amounts of unusual components in complex biological samples, even without any prior knowledge of their structural identities. This is the equivalent to removing the blindfold, turning the lights on, putting the obstacles aside and placing the item on a pedestal.
When our researchers here at SCIEX set out to do something, they don’t stop until they get there. As the opioid epidemic becomes the center of the drug overdose crisis, our team sought to develop a non-targeted screening workflow to screen novel fentanyl and its analogs in forensic biological samples.
Fill out the form on the right to download the technical note and learn more.
In biopharmaceutical development, sequence variants (SV) are considered an inherent risk of producing complex proteins in living systems. Sequence variants are unintended changes to the amino acid sequence of a biotherapeutic and can be caused by errors in transcription or translation in the host cell, or cell culture and process conditions. Detailed analysis of SVs is important in process and product development to ensure the drug’s safety and efficacy. Even low‑level sequence variants can have significant implications for product quality, safety, and efficacy, making their accurate detection and characterization a critical requirement across development, process optimization, and regulatory submission.
CE‑SDS remains a cornerstone assay for characterizing fragmentation, aggregation, and product‑related impurities in therapeutic proteins. UV detection has been the long‑standing standard. However, it frequently struggles with baseline noise, limited sensitivity for minor fragments, and subjective integration.
At SCIEX, innovation doesn’t stop at instruments; it extends to how you interact with your LC-MS/MS or CE systems every day. That’s why we’re excited to introduce the SCIEX Now spring 2026 improvements: a set of meaningful enhancements shaped directly by your feedback.
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