GEN-MKT-18-7897-A
Feb 6, 2019 | Blogs, Forensic | 0 comments
Drug testing is a moving target. As novel psychoactive substances (NPS) rapidly emerge as a new class of designer stimulants (DS), global use has reached an all-time high over the last decade. Supposedly ‘legal’ alternatives to internationally controlled drugs, these compounds are typically manufactured ‘underground’ in unregulated laboratories by teams that are a step ahead of regulators. By simply altering the concoction of chemicals, the drugs slide under permissible legal radars.
With NPS-related deaths on the rise, the time it takes to detect these metabolites in forensic samples is critical. Clearly, there is a greater need for new technologies and methodologies to detect new substances and take an appropriate course of action to save lives.
I Don’t Know What I’m Looking for (But I’ll Know When I Have Found It)Trying to look for that “unknown” in a complex biological sample can be harder than finding a disguised fugitive in Grand Central Station at rush hour! It seems like an impossible task. The fast-paced nature of the market combined with widespread availability of an increasing number of substances is frightening. In fact, at the dawn of the millennium, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) listed only a handful of NPS. By 2008 the number was up to 26. Now more than 560 NPS are currently being monitored by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, with 100 new agents identified in 2015 alone.
Traditional drug screening tends to take a two-prong approach:
Where Unknown Compounds Can Hide, We Can FindIt seems that identifying the unknown in the evolving designer drug market, knowns are not that simple. Fret not! High-Resolution Accurate Mass Spectrometry (HRMS) innovation such as the SCIEX X500R QTOF system coupled with a detailed toxicology screening method for 664 forensic compounds can do the job.
The good news? There’s a concise and comprehensive way to screen for unknown substances in your forensic evidence. This technote shows how our HRMS system powered by SCIEX OS Software work together. Discover a single-injection method for screening 664 most up-to-date forensic compounds, with library searching to automate and confidently establish the identification of unknowns in an efficient, all-in-one workflow.
Read the tech note today by filling out the form on your right and downloading our Forensics Compendium.
We recently hosted a webinar focused on streamlining forensic toxicology workflows, featuring expert speakers Maria Sarkisian from the San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (SFOCME) and Dr. Dick Paul Kloos from the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI). The webinar explored innovative LC-MS/MS strategies that help forensic labs improve efficiency. In this blog, we share highlights from the Q&A session, where our speakers addressed the audience’s questions and shared actionable insights for forensic laboratory professionals.
We’re excited to launch our Ask the PFAS expert series, where we tackle some of the most pressing questions around PFAS testing, containment, and contamination control. In this first instalment, we sit down with Simon Roberts, a SCIEX application scientist, to share practical insights and expert advice.
Thanks to Starbucks, who launched the pumpkin spice latte in 2003 (yes, over 20 years ago), the spice mixture became a global phenomenon, loved and disliked at the same time.
Posted by
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Share this post with your network