There and Square Again: A Frit Coverage Tale
Have you ever encountered problems loading your samples onto an SPE or SLE plate? Aside from sample viscosity or cartridge blockages, a good troubleshooting step to start with is ensuring that you are...
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Methods for a drug class or one large panel - what's the difference
Most clinical and forensic labs have a used a traditional approach for drug testing called screen with reflex to confirmation. This involves analyzing samples using an immunoassay technique that ident...
Why should I filter my samples instead of doing dilute-and-shoot?
Let's face it, the whole solid phase extraction method development process can be time consuming and expensive. So Dilute-and-Shoot methods end up being the choice in some laboratories. The problem is...
Synthetic Cannabinoids: how to extract them from whole blood?
Synthetic cannabinoids are some of the most widely abused drugs in the world. They are structurally similar and have similar effects to marijuana but are frequently referred to as “legal highs”. Chemi...
Need good sources of reference for sample prep method development?
The sole purpose for method development is to construct a robust and analytically sound method that will not just pass the barriers of validation, but provide physicians and patients with sound and re...
Trying to develop a new method? How do I do a literature search?
When trying to develop a new method for the detection of a drug panel, you need to refer to reliable sources to learn all you need to know regarding your analytes. For this post, we’ll go in detail th...
What are the first steps to building a proper method?
Before we get into our extractions, we need to set up our LC/MS to detect our analytes of interest. The LC will provide the chromatography - or separation of our analytes - and the MS will support det...
What is crosstalk and how do I prevent it from contaminating my samples?
Evaporative crosstalk is contamination that occurs during evaporation of the elution solvent after SLE or SPE extraction. Volatile analytes evaporate, then redistribute in adjacent wells in a 96-well ...
How do I come up with a starting point for my SPE method?
You've just decided to develop a solid phase extraction (SPE) method for a new assay in your lab. However, there are so many decisions to be made! Which company to choose? Which product to use? Polyme...
Is Sample Prep the only thing to consider for successful analyses?
We’ve all been there. We prepare a batch of samples to analyze, prime our systems, warm up the detector, and within 2-3 injections we receive an error message stating that an integral component has fa...