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winter/spring 2004

Alturas Expands Services

Alturas is pleased to announce expanded services to include weekend sample receiving. We understand the importance of not only expedited turn-around times, but also for our customers to be able to utilize a full work week to run studies, therefore we now accept samples for delivery on Saturday. Additionally, if our clients request priority analyses for their Saturday shipments, Alturas is able to meet 24 and 48 hour turn-around times for data delivery on Monday or Tuesday.

Our assay list continues to expand with more proprietary and non-proprietary assays for support of our sponsors. For more information about our LC/MS/MS services, please visit our website: www.alturasanalytics.com

2004 Symposia and Conferences

Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PittCon), March 7 - 12, 2004, Chicago, Illinois.

Dr. Shane Needham will be teaching the Short Course: “HPLC Method Development for LC/MS” on Friday, March 12, 2004.

Connecticut Separation Science Council (CSSC), April 29, 2004, New London, Connecticut.

Presentation: “HPLC/MS/MS Quantitative Analysis of Drugs Used to Protect Against Chemical Warfare Agents for Homeland Security Efforts.”

52nd Annual American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS)  Conference, May 23 - 27, 2004, Nashville, Tennessee.

Poster: “Development of an HPLC/MS/MS Bioanalytical Method for the Quantitative Analysis of a Polypeptide Proteinase Inhibitor from Plasma”.

Fifth Annual Land O’Lakes Bioanalytical Conference July 12 - 16, 2004, Devil’s Head Resort, Merrimac, Wisconsin.

Symposium on Chemical and Pharmaceutical Structure Analysis (CPSA), Oct. 18 - 21, 2004, Princeton, New Jersey.

46th Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry (RMCAC), Aug. 1 - 5, 2004, Denver, Colorado.

13th North American International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX) Meeting, Aug. 29 - Sept. 2, 2004, Vancouver, Canada.

Alturas Sponsors and Exhibits at AAPS 2004

Alturas Analytics will be sponsoring the Annual American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Meeting November 7-11, 2004 in Baltimore, Maryland. We will also be exhibiting in Baltimore, please visit our booth, #1404.

Dr. Shane Needham will be teaching a short course at AAPS entitled “HPLC Method Development for LC/MS”.

LC/MS Tech Tips

The use of peptides as therapeutic agents or as delivery agents for drugs (drug-peptide conjugates) is becoming more common and the quantitative measurement of the peptides from biological fluids is important to obtain pharmacokinetic data. Often these peptides are measured with the use of immunoassays. However, immunoassays are often not selective, accurate or precise. Therefore, HPLC/MS assays are an attractive alternative for the measurement of peptides or peptide conjugates from biological fluids. However, traditional precipitation or liquid-liquid extraction and typical MS/MS conditions are not always successful for the analysis of peptides. Thus solid phase extraction and special MS/MS conditions may be necessary for peptide analysis.

At Alturas, we have developed several HPLC/MS/MS assays for the quantitative determination of peptides from plasma. We have developed a general extraction and analysis method that works for many different types of peptides ranging from 10 to over 100 residues. The SPE methods take advantage of the polar and non-polar characteristics of peptides by the use of a mixed mode extraction bed. The fragmentation characteristics of peptides are often such that a parent to parent MS/MS transition is monitored. Our LC/MS/MS methods are accurate and precise for the measurement of the peptides to the pg/mL level.