Direct-injection screening for acidic drugs in plasma and neutral drugs in equine urine by differential-gradient LC–LC coupled MS/MS

Direct-injection LC–LC hybrid tandem MS methods have been developed for undertaking broad-based screening for acidic drugs in protein-precipitated plasma and neutral doping agents in equine urine. In both analyses, analytes present in the matrix were trapped using a HLB® extraction column before being refocused and separated on a Chromolith® RP-18e monolithic analytical column using a controlled differential gradient generated by proportional dilution of the first column's eluent with water. Each method has been optimised by the adoption of a mobile phase and gradient that was tailored to enhance ionisation in the MS source while maintaining good chromatographic behaviour for the majority of the target drugs. The analytical column eluent was fed into the heated nebulizer (HN) part of the Duospray® interface attached to a 4000 QTRAP® mass spectrometer. Information dependent acquisition (IDA) with dynamic background subtraction (DBS) was configured to trigger a sensitive enhanced product ion (EPI) scan when a multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) survey scan signal exceeded the defined criteria. Ninety-one percent of acidic drugs in protein-precipitated plasma and 80% of the neutral compounds in equine urine were detected when spiked at 10 ng/ml.