Journal
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Volume 84, Issue 13, Pages 5574-5581Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/ac300509h
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- RTI International
- National Institute on Drug Abuse [DA-031988]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Detection of new designer drugs remains an analytical challenge because of the ability of manufacturers to rapidly substitute closely related analogs for banned substances. Traditional targeted mass spectrometry methods rely on library searches, known masses, or multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) transitions and are therefore often unable to detect or identify recently discovered or yet unreported designer drug analogs. Here, high-resolution mass spectrometry in conjunction with mass defect filtering is presented as a method for nontargeted analysis to detect both known and novel analogs of designer drugs. The technique is applied in depth to a family of designer drugs composed of indole-derived synthetic cannabinoids closely related to JWH-018, a substance recently controlled in the United States. A single mass defect filter with a SO mDa window encompasses over 80% of all currently published structures in this family. Searching for precursor ions of common fragment ions enables detection of compounds with mass defects that fall outside the range of mass defect filter parameters. Application of a mass defect filter to fragment ions prior to precursor ion searching increases the breadth of analogs that can be detected. The combined approach defines a broad-spectrum search for related molecules.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available