Liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry and high resolution mass spectrometry as analytical tools to characterize multi-class cytostatic compounds.

Cristian Gómez-Canela, Nuria Cortés-Francisco, Francesc Ventura, Josep Caixach, Silvia Lacorte

Department of Environmental Chemistry, IDAEA-CSIC, Jordi Girona 18-26, 08034 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Journal of chromatography. A 2013 Feb 8

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Cytostatic compounds used in the treatment of cancer have emerged as a new generation of water contaminants due to the continuous amounts administered to patients and to the fact that a variable proportion is excreted unchanged. In this study, we have evaluated the performance of liquid-chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) and high resolution mass spectrometry using an Orbitrap analyzer (LC-HRMS) for the multiresidue determination of multi-class cytostatic compounds. In a first step, ionization conditions were tested in positive electrospray mode and optimum fragmentation patterns were determined. For LC-MS/MS, two selected reaction monitoring (SRM) transitions were optimized and for LC-HRMS, the molecular ion with 5 ppm error and two product ions were defined. Following, the chromatographic conditions were optimized considering that compounds analyzed have a very different chemical structure and chromatographic behavior. The best performance was obtained with a Luna C18 column, which permitted the separation of the 26 compounds in 15 min. Finally, the performance of LC-MS/MS and LC-HRMS was compared in terms of linearity, sensitivity, intra and inter-day precision and overall robustness. While LC-MS/MS provided good identification capabilities due to selective SRM transitions, LC-Orbitrap proved to be 100 times more sensitive. This study provides a comprehensive overview on the MS conditions to determine the outmost used cytostatic compounds and provides a spectral library to be used for the identification of these compounds in water or biological matrices. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Citation

Cristian Gómez-Canela, Nuria Cortés-Francisco, Francesc Ventura, Josep Caixach, Silvia Lacorte. Liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry and high resolution mass spectrometry as analytical tools to characterize multi-class cytostatic compounds. Journal of chromatography. A. 2013 Feb 8;1276:78-94