St George's Hospital Medical School, London, has recently added a further LC/MS/MS system to its existing range of mass spectrometry instruments to help enhance the research service it provides
The analytical unit at St George's Hospital Medical School, London, has recently added an API 4000 LC/MS/MS system from Applied Biosystems to its existing range of mass spectrometry instruments to help enhance the research service it provides. David Holt, director of the Unit, explained: "Our work is quite unusual given that we are a medical school-based research laboratory and includes bioanalytics and analytical proficiency testing for pharmaceutical companies performing drug discovery and development as well as developing methods or validating existing methods for regulatory studies.
"We are also unique in using LC/MS/MS instruments in routine forensic toxicology studies, particularly in the areas of recreational drugs and drug-facilitated sexual assaults.
"There has been considerable interest over the years in developing more potent low-dose compounds, which makes measurements by conventional techniques difficult.
"This is one of the reasons we switched to using LC/MS methods and when we purchased our first API 2000 LC/MS/MS system five years ago, Applied Biosystems/MDS Sciex was a well-established company in this field.
"In the years that followed, we added a second API 2000 and then an API 4000 system, the latter because we were looking for very high sensitivity and it was, and still is, the best instrument available.
"Very often projects require a very rapid turnover of results.
"For example, we're currently providing a pharmaceutical company with our investigation of indicators that are useful for altering drug dosages in a volunteer study and a fast results service is needed so changes can be made the following week.
"Mass spectrometry is essential for this sort of work, and if we hadn't invested in mass spectrometry five years ago we wouldn't be in this business now," concluded Holt.
