Investigating the Flavour Profiles of E-Cigarettes
Researchers from Gdansk University of Technology, Poland, have investigated the flavour profiles of e-cigarette refill solutions using GC–MS/MS.
Photo Credit: REDPIXEL.PL/Shutterstock.com
Researchers from Gdansk University of Technology, Poland, have investigated the flavour profiles of e-cigarette refill solutions using gas chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (GC–MS/MS) (1).
The massive rise of e-cigarettes has partly been fuelled by the wide variety of flavours available to smoke. One publication found that 81.5% of young interviewees use e-cigarettes “because they come in flavours I like” (2). Despite EU tobacco regulations stipulating that flavoured cigarettes are prohibited, this does not apply to e-cigarettes with over 7700 unique flavoured e-liquids being sold as of 2014 (3). The sheer quantity of additives across the liquids has led to concerns regarding their safety, with numerous studies finding adverse effects to e-cigarette use (4,5). Therefore, researchers wanted to carry out a wide-ranging chemical analysis to ascertain the unknown nature and impact of these additives on human cells, particularly the lungs (6,7). They also wanted to document and produce data on the compounds that are responsible for specific e-liquid flavours. The first step in this process was the development of a sensitive method capable of analyzing e-cigarette refills.
Using GC–MS/MS researchers evaluated the compounds responsible for five of the most popular flavours (menthol, apple, tobacco, strawberry, and cherry) from five different brands.
The developed methodology successfully quantitated 90 flavour additives and categorized the flavour chemicals for the evaluation of the taste profiles. “I believe the methods would be suitable to analyze more flavours,” said Pawel Kubica, Gdansk University of Technology. “Everything depends on the physiochemical properties of compounds and how they interact with the stationary phase and with the detector,” he continued.
Future studies are likely to follow on the subject because of the enormous variety of e-cigarette flavours, providing a wealth of interesting compounds for study. “We have finished a project to generate and collect aerosol from e-cigarettes,” said Kubica. “The main purposes of this project were to design and construct a smoking machine for e-cigarettes to obtain high recoveries of aerosol (<90%), reduce the time required for aerosol generation and collection to below 5 min, to choose the proper solid sorbent to “trap” aerosol efficiently, and to desorb with simple solvents,” said Kubica. Previous studies in the area have reported little information on an aerosol generation process, which the researchers from Gdansk University of Technology hope to remedy. “I hope it will be published soon”, added Kubica.
Further to this study, researchers have also developed a method to determine flavours together with nicotine in collected aerosol samples using GC–MS/MS.
For more information, please visit https://chem.pg.edu.pl/kcha/main-page
References
- J. Aszyk et al., J. Chromatogr. A1547, 86–98 (2018).
- B.K. Ambrose, B. Rostron, and N. Borek, JAMA314, 1871–1873 (2015).
- S. Zhu et al., Tob. Control23, iii3–iii9 (2014).
- U.S Department of Health and Human Services, E-Cigarette Use Among Youth and Young Adults: A Report of the Surgeon General (2016)
- A. Khlystov and V. Samburova, Environ. Sci. Technol. 50, 13080–13085 (2016).
- C.A. Lerner et al., PLoS One10, 1–26 (2015).
- C.I. Vardavas et al., Tob, Induc. Dis.15, 1–7 (2017).
GC–TOF-MS Finds 250 Volatile Compounds in E-Cigarette Liquids
November 1st 2024A study has used gas chromatography coupled to a time-of-flight mass spectrometer to build an electron ionization mass spectra database of more than 250 chemicals classified as either volatile or semi-volatile compounds. An additional, confirmatory layer of liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis was subsequently performed.
AI and GenAI Applications to Help Optimize Purification and Yield of Antibodies From Plasma
October 31st 2024Deriving antibodies from plasma products involves several steps, typically starting from the collection of plasma and ending with the purification of the desired antibodies. These are: plasma collection; plasma pooling; fractionation; antibody purification; concentration and formulation; quality control; and packaging and storage. This process results in a purified antibody product that can be used for therapeutic purposes, diagnostic tests, or research. Each step is critical to ensure the safety, efficacy, and quality of the final product. Applications of AI/GenAI in many of these steps can significantly help in the optimization of purification and yield of the desired antibodies. Some specific use-cases are: selecting and optimizing plasma units for optimized plasma pooling; GenAI solution for enterprise search on internal knowledge portal; analysing and optimizing production batch profitability, inventory, yields; monitoring production batch key performance indicators for outlier identification; monitoring production equipment to predict maintenance events; and reducing quality control laboratory testing turnaround time.
Multivariate Design of Experiments for Gas Chromatographic Analysis
November 1st 2024Recent advances in green chemistry have made multivariate experimental design popular in sample preparation development. This approach helps reduce the number of measurements and data for evaluation and can be useful for method development in gas chromatography.
