Application Notes

Ingestion of DEG-adulterated glycerin excipients in pharmaceuticals and personal care products, such as toothpaste, mouth wash, and medicinal syrups has caused systemic alcohol intoxication, acidosis, and subsequent multi-organ failure that have led to hundreds of fatalities of children and adults (1). To help prevent future adulterations, the U.S. FDA requested that the U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) revise the USP 32 NF 26 monograph to identify and quantify EG and DEG in sorbitol solutions at the maximum limit of 0.1%. The revised monograph (USP 33-NF 28) meets these criteria using GC-FID (2).

Heating is a common and essential requirement in most biopharmaceutical production methods. Chitosan is an amino polysaccharide obtained by alkaline deacetylation of naturally abundant chitin. It is known as a potentially beneficial material in many pharmaceutical applications such as tissue engineering, drug delivery, cell encapsulation, and medical devices.

The United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) released a revision to the Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs, scheduled to become effective May 1, 2010. As part of the new guidelines, multiple changes were made for the confirmation of amphetamine-class urine analysis.

Odor causing compounds can find their way into drinking water from a number of sources. One of the most common compounds causing a "musty" or "earthy" smell is geosmin, which is released when microbes such as blue-green algae and actinobacteria die.

The resolution of time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometers continues to improve and attributes of the instrument that once were considered inconsequential have risen in importance as the push to higher and higher resolution continues.

Glycosylation is one of the most common forms of post-translational modification of eukaryotic proteins. Glycosylated proteins (glycoproteins) make up the majority of human proteins.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one chemical group that has been linked to increase ozone levels. When present in indoor spaces at high enough levels they can produce sick building syndrome symptoms in people.

Lactose, a major disaccharide found in milk products, is catabolized into glucose and galactose by the enzyme lactase. Lactose-intolerant individuals have a lactase deficiency; therefore lactose is not completely catabolized.

The release of certain chemicals from building products is of increasing concern due to their potential detrimental effect on human health and the environment; therefore, new regulations requiring the production of low emission materials are currently being implemented.

Eosin Y is an important tracer in groundwater studies for determining water migration paths and identifying the distribution of environmental pollutants.

When one is assessing the structure and function of a protein there are numerous analytical tests that are performed to fully characterize a protein of interest.

The amaZon series is the next step in Bruker Daltonics' family of ion trap mass spectrometers. Incorporating a number of new innovations to Bruker's highly successful ion trap technology platforms, the amaZon series is a true leap forward in performance and reliability.

Polysaccharide-based chiral stationary phases (CSPs) and Pirkle-type CSPs are often successful in achieving a majority of analytical and preparative chiral separations.

This QuEChERS procedure is specifically adapted to cereal grain matrices such as corn, oats, rice, and wheat using UPLC-MS-MS and automated direct sample introduction GC-TOFMS to achieve good recoveries of 176 analytes.

Fused silica capillary tubing is increasingly finding use in wave guiding applications. This application note discusses wave guiding optics in light guiding capillary.

Robust hardware and automated software are critical to method ASTM D7169. The Shimadzu GC-2010, equipped with an advanced flow controller, has proven to be reproducible and effective, and Shimadzu distillation GC software has achieved automation by integrating calibration, integration, calculation, and report functions.

Porous ODS columns are the most popular reversed-phase columns used in today's laboratories.

LEAP has developed a new instrument for collecting the entire mobile phase stream during metabolic profiling HPLC–MS analyses into a sealed, 96-well, LTuma plate.

Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) is a very effective sample clean-up technique, key to an accurate and sensitive analysis of pesticide, PCBs, mycotoxin, PAHs, and other similar compounds.

The costs associated with pharmaceutical testing are considerable and many lab managers are seeking ways to reduce costs by reducing solvent usage and improving productivity while still using the LC instruments in their lab.

With many "blockbuster" drugs losing patent protection, there has been mounting pressure across the pharmaceutical industry to shorten the time to bring new chemical entities (NCEs) to market and reduce the overall cost. This requires concerted productivity improvement in many aspects of drug discovery and development by continuously adopting new enabling technologies.

Quantification of substances, such as drug impurities or library compounds when pure standards are not available is difficult yet often necessary.

Benzodiazepines are commonly assayed to determine therapeutic dose levels and for forensic investigation. These drugs are commonly prescribed to alleviate pain and therapeutic dosing needs to be monitored.

In pain management analysis, urine is often used as it is a copiously available bodily fluid that can be collected easily and used for analysis. Urine, however, can cause difficulties in analysis due to the variances in the endogenous nature of the urine matrix, which can impact the chromatographic separation and quantitation.

The U.S. EPA Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water released Method 524.3, "Measurement of Purgeable Organic Compounds in Water by Capillary Column Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Version 1.0," in the Federal Register on August 3rd, 2009 (1, 2). This new method contains an updated list of 76 VOCs that includes fuel oxygenates and two emerging contaminants of interest.

Explosive compounds are widely used in warfare, mining industries, terrorist attacks, and civil constructions. Explosive contaminated soils are mostly found on firing points, impact areas, and training ranges. The explosive contaminates in soil are possible sources for surface and ground water contaminations, posing environmental and public health risks due to the compounds' toxicity, carcinogenicity, and mutagenicity.

Hamilton Company is best known for manufacturing precision fluid measuring products, including syringes for HPLC and GC. For the last 30 years Hamilton Company has manufactured HPLC resins and columns while developing separations for customers. Two of the separations are highlighted below.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used in high production volume manufacturing of polycarbonate plastics (for example, food containers and plastic bottles) and epoxy resins (1).

Grapefruit juice was analyzed by gradient UHPLC for naringin - a flavanoid that gives it its bitter taste. A ZORBAX Rapid Resolution HD (RRHD) StableBond-C18 2.1 x 150 mm, 1.8 µm column resolved over 60 peaks including naringin in 7 min, and was re-equilibrated in just 3 min by operating at a high flow rate (0.8 mL/min).

The identification and quantification of drugs of abuse in blood (plasma, serum, whole blood) has become very common in the forensic medicine laboratory. Liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) has been traditionally used at a basic pH (pH = 9) for the extraction of amphetamines, cocaine and its metabolites, and opiates from blood.