Pre-registration Required

Tuesday, July 22, 2008       Time: 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

#13 The Use of LC/MS in the Forensic Toxicology Laboratory

Faculty

Christopher Heartsill, BS Dallas County Medical Examiner 5230 Medical Center Drive Dallas, TX 75235 Susan R Howe, PhD Tarrant County Medical Examiner 200 Feliks Gwozdz Place Fort Worth, TX 76104 Tania A. Sasaki, PhD Applied Biosystems 850 Lincoln Centre Drive Foster City, CA 94404 H. Chip Walls, BS University of Miami Department of Pathology Forensic Toxicology Laboratory 12500 SW 152nd Street, Building B Miami, FL 33177 Robert D. Johnson, PhD Federal Aviation Administration Civil Aerospace Medical Institute Oklahoma City, OK 73125 Francois A. Espourteille, PhD Manager, Applications Thermo Fisher Scientific 101 Constitution Blvd. Franklin, MA 02038

Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry has long been recognized as the gold standard for drug identification in a forensic toxicology setting. Recent years, however, have seen the development of liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) as a powerful new tool for both identification and quantitation of a variety of compounds. With the advent of this increasingly affordable technology, many laboratories have turned to LC/MS as an integral part of their operation.

This workshop will provide the participant with an overview of LC/MS operation, and discuss the advantages of moving from GC/MS to LC/MS/MS. It will include an overview of LC/QqQ (triple quad), LC/QTOF (time of flight), LC/TOF, LC/MS (single quad), LC/MS ion trap and DART-TOF (Direct Analysis in Real Time, Time of Flight MS) technologies. The different mass spectrometers will be discussed in light of each instrument’s strengths and weaknesses for providing forensically-acceptable, highly sensitive screening and identification results.

In addition, a strategy for LC/MS method development and validation will be presented. Several LC/MS applications will also be discussed, including screening biological samples for hundreds of drugs of forensic significance, as well as quantitation of several drug classes routinely encountered in the forensic toxicology laboratory. Further discussion will be provided on a software interface for LC/MS that enables users to quickly develop and implement testing methods and to train novice users in LC/MS operation.