Analytical chemistry method simplification is an ongoing theme in residue analysis. This has been a goal for analytical chemists long before the current millennium: faster bench methods, cleaner sample extracts, expanding target analyte lists, faster instrument analyses, easier data reduction and interpretation, continual reduction in cost per sample and all without compromising accuracy. Methods must also be easily transferable to other analysts and labs. Current priorities in our lab with bench and instrument methods focus on minimizing, if not eliminating, the sample extract’s impact on LC-tandem MS instrumentation, developing “faster” analyses using conventional LC systems (2 min vs. 8-12 min run times) and columns, which result in simpler methods that are easy to transfer, reducing mobile phase flow rates and the elimination of certain solvents. Developing strategies around the rapid interpretation and integration of reconstructed peaks that require little to no human manipulation time. This results in a higher throughput for the same energy footprint both at the bench and the instrument.  These time savings then allow for the inclusion of significantly more QC, much faster reaction time to study suspect positives and report on them, including re-checking those, and/ or the addition of more sample batches on the same instrument. Since extracts are clean, no time is spent on maintaining the front end of the instrument even after many thousands of injections of tissue extracts, and instrument performance is retained from the first injection to the last in a batch without isotope correction, even over a period of weeks. Faster analyses can also be used as an analytical advantage. For example, use of Ensemble Averaging from multiple injections of the same sample increases the S/N of reconstructed fragmentation pathways, resulting in enhanced analyte detection. These points will be discussed with some examples.<br/>

Analytical challenges and developments for methods required to support regulatory requirements

254th National Meeting (2017)

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