LC-MS Bioanalytical Application

Attendees continue to trickle in, as snowstorms around the country continue to disrupt air travel. For those like me who thought, “Chicago in February? Hooray! I’ll finally get to see some real snow,” it seems we’ve left the storms at home. The snow showers keep coming here, but none of it is accumulating. So we have to find excitement elsewhere, and the abundance of scientific sessions here at Pittcon provide a great selection to choose from.

A large number of conferees chose to attend session 720 this afternoon, entitled “LC-MS Bioanalytical Application.” I arrived a few minutes after the first presentation started and had difficulty finding a seat at the end of a row (ok, so I ignored my colleagues’ wise advice to wear comfortable shoes at Pittcon, and it’s really slowing me down. This place is HUGE!).

The first speaker was Joaudimir Castro, of Clemson University. Her presentation was entitled “High Performance Liquid Chromatography Particle Beam/Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-PB/MS) Analysis of Neutraceuticals Using Electron Impact and Glow Discharge Ionization Sources.” The speaker discussed methods used to determine the amount of biologically active components in such foods as wine, green tea, and fruits. This is an important application of these technologies because many of these components are thought to contain beneficial medicinal properties, but the herbal nutritional supplements in which they are found are not federally regulated. For this reason, there are no standards about the best way to quantify the amount of active components in these supplements. HPLC-PB/MS appears to offer a solution.

Also presenting during Session 720 were Eric S. Grumbach, from Waters Corporation, who spoke about “A Systematic Approach for Reducing Matrix Effects in LC/MS/MS Analyses; John R. Choiniere, from Carleton College, who discussed “Chromatographic and Mass Spectral Techniques for the Analysis of Caffeic Acid Derivatives in Echinacea purpurea Extract”; and Brian Frey, from the University of Wisconsin, who presented “Ionizable Isotopic Labeling Reagents for Relative Quantification of Metabolites by LC-MS.”

Following a short recess, Yi-Ming Liu, from Jackson State University, spoke about “Nanoparticle-Mediated Preconcentration of Peptide and Protein in ESI-MS/MS Analysis”; Heather Lord, from McMaster University, presented “Development of Miniaturized SPME Probes for Antibody Immobilization”; Ying Wang, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, discussed “Multi-Substrate Detection of Matrix Metalloproteinase Activity with Microdialysis Sampling and Mass Spectrometry”; and Bettina Seiwert, of University of Munster, spoke about “Ferrocenes as Biolabels in Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry.”

Many more sessions await our attention in the days ahead. As for me, I think I’ll go out and buy some comfortable shoes!