Targeted and Non-Targeted Screening for Drugs

Overview

The high resolution and accurate mass AB SCIEX TripleTOF™ 5600 LC/MS/MS system was used to screen for drugs from both forensic equine and forensic toxicology urine, and to quantify drug compounds with excellent accuracy and high reproducibility. Fast Information Dependent Acquisition (IDA) MS/MS spectra were used to additionally confirm the identity of detected compounds based on mass spectral library searching. The acquired full scan MS and MS/MS data can further be used to retrospectively mine data to identify non-targeted and unexpected compounds. An example is also given to demonstrate true unknown screening by the identification of the contents of an unknown pill. PeakView™ software with the XIC Manager add-in was used for targeted and non-targeted data processing. The XIC Manger consists of a table for defining a list of masses or formula to generate extracted ion chromatograms (XIC), and the ability to review results is based upon retention times, accurate mass, isotopic pattern and MS/MS library searching.