Articles

M. Hässig,^a K. Altwegg,^a H. Balsiger,^a B. Schläppi,^a J.J. Berthelier,^b B. Fiethe,^c S.A. Fuselier,^d J. De Keyser^e and M. Rubin^f

^aPhysikalisches Institut, University of Bern, Sidlerstr. 5, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
^bLATMOS, Saint Maur, France
^cInstitut of Computer and Network Engineering, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany

Doping control authorities and sports drug testing laboratories are frequently confronted with the illicit use of performance-enhancing therapeutics and therefore various analytical strategies have been developed to detect a misused drug and/or its metabolic product(s) in blood or urine specimens. Besides the administration of clinically approved drugs prohibited in sports, new drug candidates currently undergoing early or advanced clinical trials have also been the subject of investigations concerning their prevalence and abuse by athletes.

This article shows that MALDI high resolution mass spectrometry demonstrated directly that Hev b 6 and Hev b 1, and also truncated forms thereof, are present on the inner surface of medical NRL gloves. The speed and high accuracy of the applied method and instrumentation makes the detection of surface associated proteins feasible without any prior protein extraction procedure (in situ localisation).

The Foundation for Analytical Science & Technology in Africa (FASTA) is a charitable company that was established in 2005 in response to a request to provide a GC-MS to the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture & Technology (JKUAT) in Nairobi, Kenya. FASTA was founded by Steve Lancaster of BP and Barrie Nixon of Mass Spec UK Ltd. The objectives of the organisation are to support scientific education, analytical research and the preservation of the environment in Africa via capacity-building and technology transfer.

During the last few decades, solution and solid state techniques have been utilised to obtain information about the properties of supramolecular host–guest complexes. Mass spectrometric analysis of these fragile non-covalent complexes has been focused on the determination of the molecular mass of the interacting molecules and the analysis has concentrated on the characterisation of covalent compounds. Since the invention of the soft ionisation techniques [namely ESI (electospray ionisation) and MALDI (matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation)] and their development for mass spectrometry (MS) instruments, the area and way that MS analysis is used have greatly changed and expanded. In particular, ESI has attained a steady position for the analysis of biomolecules, their non-covalent complexes and other rather fragile systems, which were earlier impossible to study by mass spectrometric methods. Today, MS can be employed not only for molecular weight identification purposes but also for sophisticated analyses on versatile properties of compounds. In the area of supramolecular chemistry, MS studies are becoming more and more general, although MS utilisation is still quite limited.

We will consider here the analytical aspects involved in the measurements of illicit drugs and their metabolites in wastewater samples by HPLC-MS/MS.

Luc Alexis Leuthold, Emmanuel Varesio and Gérard Hopfgartner

Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, EPGL, University of Geneva, University of Lausanne, 20 Bd d’Yvoy, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland

Rich Sleeman, Jim Carter and Karl Ebejer

Mass Spec Analytical Ltd, Building 20F, Golf Course Lane, Filton, Bristol, BS99 7AR, UK

Anton Amann,^a,d Alex Schmid,a^,b Sabine Scholl-Bürgi,^c Stefan Telser^b and Hartmann Hinterhuber^b

^aDepartment of Anesthesia and General Intensive Care, Innsbruck Medical University, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
^bDepartment of Psychiatry, Sleep Laboratory, Innsbruck Medical University, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
^cClinical Department of General Paediatrics, Innsbruck Medical University, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria