Identification of major xenobiotic metabolites is a requirement for registration of agrochemicals around the world. This effort often requires trace level identification of metabolites from complex environmental matrices. Decreasing application rates, increasing number of studies and a lack of sufficient extraction/purification methods often challenge initial mass spectrometry-based observation strategies. To face this challenge, we are developing and utilizing additional approaches to generate metabolites, which we term non-traditional metabolite generation efforts. These techniques are typically employed early in the Discovery process and leverage a diverse group of scientists from across the Corteva R&D community. One of the major goals is to mimic key metabolic processes to access environmentally relevant metabolite targets that are difficult to detect and identify in complex plant, animal, and soil matrices. Many of these metabolite standards, that are required for completion of definitive metabolite identification work and subsequent quantitative studies are difficult to synthesize by traditional methods. The alternative metabolite generation techniques that we use include biotransformation by microbial collections, specific exogenously expressed enzyme systems, S9 cells, CYPs, plant cell suspensions, as well as forced degradation assays such as photolysis, hydrolysis, and electrochemistry. Often these techniques are used simultaneously to address specific metabolite ID challenges from a critical environmental study. We will share several examples that demonstrate the flexibility, speed, and relatively low input cost of these metabolite generating methods. In addition, these methods generate valuable analytical data that is collected and cataloged to aid in trace level metabolite identification efforts at all stages in the discovery and development process.

Use of alternative metabolite generation methods to aid in metabolite identification of environmental metabolites <i> </i>

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