Why Dried Blood Spot Analysis Is the Way to Go for Novel Psychoactive Substances(And Why You Need This SCIEX LC-MS/MS Method) Anyone with children will remember that moment in the hospital when the nurse pricks the heel of your tiny new baby to squeeze out a few drops...
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Celebrating customer experience: Insights from SCIEX leaders
Introduction Customer Experience Day (CX Day) is a special occasion for SCIEX, celebrated every first Tuesday in October. It’s a day dedicated to recognizing the incredible value of our customers and the relentless dedication of our associates who strive to make...
Detecting low levels of drugs and their metabolites in hair and nail samples using LC-MS/MS
You probably have heard of testing blood and urine samples for the presence of drugs and their metabolites. But do you know about the benefits of hair and nail analysis? In a recent webinar, Tina Binz, Deputy Head of the Center for Forensic Hair Analysis, University of Zurich, discussed the benefits of developing comprehensive and sensitive LC-MS/MS for the detection of low-level drugs and metabolites in keratinized matrices.
LC-MS system replacement: Are you ready?
Meeting deadlines in a bioanalysis laboratory can be a big challenge. Older, less sensitive and less reliable LC-MS systems make it even more difficult. Even the disruption caused by the installation and validation can be disconcerting and delay decisions. Does this sound familiar?
Questions and answers to help improve your mycotoxin analysis
During a recent webinar I shared method details for mycotoxin analysis on the SCIEX 7500 system. In this blog i will share the Q&A for the submitted questions that we did not have chance to answer during the live webinar.
Guide decisions during cell line development with more information at the intact level
Monitoring product quality attributes (PQAs) throughout monoclonal antibody (mAb) development is vital to ensuring drug safety and efficacy. By adopting orthogonal analytical techniques and integrating new technologies that have the potential to provide more information, it is possible to improve product quality and manufacturing efficiency and make more informed decisions.
Maximize NPS analysis with accurate mass spectrometry
LC-MS/MS is a powerful analytical tool in forensic toxicology testing that can support a variety of testing regimes such as screening, confirmation and quantitative workflows. More specifically, analysis of NPS using LC-MS/MS provides many advantages, including the ability to reliably detect new drugs and their metabolites from a variety of biological matrices.
Metabolite identification and peace of mind
Managing metabolite identification (Met ID) studies is challenging, so what is at the top of your priority list as you plan the year ahead? Ensuring you have the data needed to manage product safety, meeting deadlines, staff recruitment and training, maintaining compliance, capital expenses, or something else?
What has the Echo® MS system done for the pharma industry? (And don’t just take our word for it!)
SCIEX was very proud to have an illustration of the Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry (AEMS) technology that powers the Echo® MS system on the front cover of the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry in January 2023. The associated article—Ultrahigh-Throughput Intact Protein Analysis with Acoustic Ejection Mass Spectrometry—was co-authored by scientists from SCIEX and Merck.
Methods for OPI electrode cleaning for Echo® MS system electrodes
Depending on the samples you are running on the system, it is possible for the Open Port Interface (OPI) electrode to become dirty or occluded over time. Below are two different cleaning strategies that can help you maintain your Echo® MS system and keep your OPI...
Rescheduling a Schedule I substance, and the Delta-8 controversy
Did you know that in the US, drugs and other chemicals are classified into 5 distinct categories depending on the drug’s acceptable medical use and its potential for abuse or dependency? Drugs federally classified as Schedule I substances by the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are considered to have the highest potential for abuse and for creating severe psychological and/or physical dependence. In addition to heroin, LSD and MDMA (ecstasy), cannabis is classified as a Schedule I substance in the Controlled Substance Act of 1970, which means it has no approved medical usage.
The Not So Hidden Truth about Climate Change How It’s Poisoning Your Food
Did you know climate change could be poisoning your food? According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) report on Emerging Issues of Environmental Concern, rising temperatures are making crops more toxic.
Guardians of Antibiotics
This second is a blog series on the global war: Rise of Superbugs! Part 1 took a critical look at the antibiotic threat we face in today’s battlefield. The waning effectiveness of antibiotics as we head into what may seem like a post-antibiotic era has impelled new reformation to at the very least control antibiotic usage to ensure food safety.
Protein Quantitation Workflows using the TripleTOF 6600: A Case Study for Rituximab
Although the triple-stage quadrupole (QQQ) mass spectrometer remains the pillar for quantitative LC-MS/MS bioanalytical assays, due in part to the platforms’ high duty cycle when operated in multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode, the applicability of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) has become of increasing importance for protein quantitation given the complexity of proteolytically digested samples in the surrogate peptide approach. While the QQQ demonstrates high sensitivity and specificity, the relatively low-resolution measurement of m/z may fail to differentiate analyte response from nominally isobaric background interference. In contrast, HRMS with accurate mass assignment of product ion allows interference to be resolved through judicious selection of a post-acquisition mass extraction window whose tolerance is largely dictated by the effective resolution and stability of mass calibration.
Rise of the Super Bugs
The term “antibiotic-free” is becoming more and more popular in food advertising these days. Take Subway for example; in March the company elevated their antibiotic-free policy and introduced a new antibiotic-free rotisserie-style chicken sub, and they plan to, “Nix antibiotics in all its meat by 2025.”
Glyphosate, a Polar Pest Put to Test
No other pesticide has courted more media attention and controversy in recent months than glyphosate, with governments and national agencies debating its use and health effects.
Using Mass Spec to Detect Trace Explosives
The importance of protecting a country’s border is a very topical issue. The war on drugs and terror is a 24/7 task 366 days a year (2016 is a leap year). The government agencies in charge must be vigilant and maintain instrumentation to prevent terrorism, drug trafficking, and other illegal activities. Mass Spectrometry is rapidly becoming the instrument of choice for border agencies throughout the world when it comes to explosive trace detection and forensic drug compounds.
Routine Food Testing Using Mass Spectrometry
These days, it is not uncommon to hear about the overzealous application of pesticides to crops or the injection of antibiotics into animals. From grocery stores to restaurants, our food is at risk. How then, can consumers be assured that chemical contaminants like these , not to mention the risk of mycotoxin compounds are not making their way to your dinner table?
Industrialize Your Quantitative Proteomics Using a More Simplified Sample Prep
in part 1 and part 2 of this blog series we discussed how you can increase your efficiency for high throughput quantitative proteomics by industrializing your sample analysis and data processing. Microflow SWATH® Acquisition on your TripleTOF® system coupled with OneOmics™ data analysis tools allow you to run samples faster, collect data faster, and process your data files faster. It all adds up to getting more meaningful biological information in a shorter amount of time.
Quantify and Identify Pesticides in Complex Food Samples Using the QTRAP 6500 LC-MS/MS System
Recent regulations on food analysis require screening for pesticides using confirmatory techniques, such as GC-MS and LC-MS/MS. More than 1000 pesticides are used worldwide and, along with their metabolites and degradation products, are present in food. There is a demand for powerful and rapid analytical methods that can identify pesticides with high confidence in a broad range of food matrices and quantify at low concentrations with good accuracy and reproducibility. Challenges for pesticide residue laboratories at the moment are the request to test for more compounds, in a wider range of samples, all without sacrificing data quality.
Industrialize Your Quantitative Proteomics with the OneOmics Project
For many labs, the days are long gone when it was acceptable to run only a few samples a week for your quantitative proteomics projects. The pressure for faster turn-around times, to support larger cohort studies, to sustain multiple research directions, and to transition from a purely unbiased discovery mode to verifying something truly unique and interesting, all demand a faster pace. Many labs are now being asked to analyze a hundred samples a week or more. In part 1 of this blog series, we saw how moving to a microflow SWATH workflow can dramatically increase your throughput with little compromise on overall results. In this part, we’ll address what to do with all of this data because it’s just no good if all we’ve done is move the bottleneck downstream.
Fast, Efficient, Disulfide Bond Mapping Using BioPharmaView™ Software
Fast LC-MS acquisition and automated data processing will help you speed up peptide mapping of your biotherapeutic, including critical disulfide bond and post-translational modification characterization. SCIEX helps you untangle the complexity of disulfide bonds, speeding up your characterization process.
Bottom-Up Proteomics: A Discussion with Christie Hunter
Biocompare recently featured an article on Bottom-Up Proteomics. I had a chance to follow up with Christie Hunter and expand on some of the questions featured in the article:
Characterize and Monitor Host Cell Proteins (HCPs) Using SWATH Acquisition Technology
During drug development, the removal of impurities and purification of a final drug product is absolutely essential in order to ensure the safety and efficacy of a therapeutic drug. Of particular concern for biologics are impurities that can stem from host cell proteins. Because biologics are developed through cell culture and fermentation within a host cell, proteins from this host cell can be co-purified with the final biologic. These host cell proteins or HCPs can cause the final product to have undesired side-effects such as eliciting an immune response in patients taking the drug, or affecting the drug’s stability or efficacy. As a result, regulating agencies require drug companies to monitor levels of HCPs during the development and purification of a biologic and to remove HCPs to an acceptable level in the final biotherapeutic product.
Simplifying Biologics Bioanalysis Sample Prep
These days, everyone seems to be furiously scratching tickets to become instant winners, but I’ll bet you didn’t expect to find sample prep tips that way. For large molecule bioanalysis, preparing your samples can be one of the biggest challenges. It’s a whole different world from traditional small molecule bioanalysis. SCIEX has developed techniques and automation that make biologics sample prep simpler and faster, with reproducible results.
Taking on Precision Medicine with Industrialized Proteomics
What if we could deliver the right treatment at the right time, to the right person to better, more effectively treat complex disease? This is the promise of precision medicine, to be able to approach complex disease treatment and prevention by taking into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.
The Connection Between Mass Spectrometry and Space Exploration
Mass spectrometry has been used for some pretty fascinating applications in our world – like testing for steroid use in athletes1, measuring pesticides in grapes2, assessing the efficiency of a psoriasis drug3, and whether that expensive bottle of 100% olive oil is, well, really 100% olive oil.4 But did you know mass spec is also used out of this world? Like… in space?
The Future of Biologics Drug Development is Today
Since the 1982 approval of Eli Lilly’s recombinant human insulin, Humulin, biotherapeutic drug development has steadily grown into a global market valued at $140 billion in 2013, increased from $25 billion in 2001
A Hybrid LBA/LC-MS Assay – Your Questions Answered
Last week we posted a blog on Biologics Bioanalysis Key Challenges, where we presented a webinar on those key challenges.
Using Mass Spectrometry to Identify and Quantify Contaminants in Water Samples
Access to clean wholesome water is one of our basic human rights. Human engineering has designed incredible methods to collect, filter, purify, store and distribute water to billions of us worldwide, but does this mean that our water is completely safe to drink? Also,...
LC-MS/MS Method for Biotherapeutic Drug Development Challenges
Traditionally, the pharmacokinetic profile of biotherapeutics such as insulin glargine, adalimumab, trastuzumab and others, used gold standard LBAs to assess dose-response during drug discovery and development. However, LBAs require a specific antibody reagent to be developed for each mAb variant, a process that is often incompatible with the compressed timeframes encountered during the initial stages of drug development.