Optimization of Coated Blade Spray for Rapid Screening and Quantitation of 105 Veterinary Drugs in Biological Tissue Samples

Rapid and efficient determination of contaminants at trace levels in tissue samples has become an unmet need around the globe. Coated blade spray (CBS) extraction/ionization is a technology capable of performing, with a single device, enrichment of analytes present in complex matrices, as well as the direct interface and introduction of said analytes into the mass spectrometer via electrospray ionization. To facilitate the challenging rapid tissue screening, we describe for the first time the use of a very thin layer of biocompatible polyacrylonitrile as a CBS device undercoating to make metal surface biocompatible. This add-on is meant to protect the portion of the uncoated stainless-steel of the blade that is normally exposed to the matrix, consequently becoming susceptible to adhesion of matrix macromolecules, cells, and fat. In addition, we present for the first time the use of CBS in negative ionization mode for quantitative purposes. The optimized CBS workflow allows for rapid and high-throughput screening and quantitation of 105 veterinary drugs in homogenized bovine tissue in both negative and positive ionization mode in one single run using a single CBS device with analysis times as short as 1 min per sample when 96 extractions are simultaneously conducted. While only two internal standards were used for correction, one per ionization mode, excellent accuracy and precision were achieved, with more than 90% of analytes falling within the 70-120% range of their true concentrations and yielding RSD <= 25% at three validation levels. The majority of analytes achieved linear correlation coefficients >0.99, and all 105 analytes were able to meet both Canadian and U.S. regulatory levels.