Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX teams up with forensic toxicologists to revolutionise drugs of abuse testing

Scientists from Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX in Toronto have teamed up with forensic toxicologists at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, University Hospital Freiburg, in Germany, to develop novel methods that can simultaneously detect between 300 and 400 substances from just one sample of human blood, bodily fluid or hair in under 25 minutes.

The development has huge potential in legal casework and in hospital emergency departments where doctors need to find out urgently what drugs of abuse intoxicated or incapacitated patients may have taken.

Data from the new LC/MS/MS-based analytical methods are being compiled to form a compound library of information and spectral data for hundreds of pharmacologically relevant compounds, including opiates, amphetamines, cannabinoids, benzodiazepines, antidepressants, hypnotics, and many others, which will be invaluable for other forensic toxicologists, chemists and pharmacologists.

Prof Wolfgang Weinmann, forensic toxicologist at the Institute, explained: "The approach we have developed with MDS SCIEX is faster, more sensitive and requires less sample preparation, so is less expensive than traditional HPLC UV or immunoassay-based techniques."

The methods depend on Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX Q TRAP^® LC/MS/MS technologies, which are ideal for identification, quantitation and confirmation. The hybrid triple quadrupole/linear ion trap Q TRAP Systems provide the unique ability to acquire both quantitative and qualitative information during a single run at the same level of sensitivity and selectivity. The technology makes it possible to acquire a spectral fingerprint in the ion trap mode, which has the advantage of acquiring more fragment rich spectra at a much higher level of sensitivity than that of traditional ion trap or triple quadrupole instruments.