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winter/spring 2005

Alturas Continues to Expand Operations

Alturas is pleased to welcome Dr. Jennifer Zimmer, Ph.D. Jennifer comes to us from Dr. Richard Smith’s Group at Pacific Northwest Laboratory where she worked on establishing chromatographic, mass spectrometric and sample processing methods for analysis of a variety of molecules by LC/MS/MS. Jennifer will start in April and we’re happy to have her as part of the Alturas team!

Additionally, Alturas will soon move into our newly remodeled lab space! We are putting the final touches on our additional laboratory space and we will move into our “4000 lab” by the end of March.

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.

2005 Symposia and Conferences

Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy (PittCon), February 27 - March 4th, 2005, Orlando, Florida.

Dr. Shane Needham will be teaching the Short Course (#571): “HPLC Methods Development for LC/MS” on Wednesday, March 2, 2005.

53rd Annual American Society for Mass Spectrometry (ASMS)  Conference, June 5 - 9, 2005, San Antonio, Texas.

Poster: “Development of a Novel HILIC HPLC/MS/MS Bioanalytical Method for the Quantitative Analysis of Carboplatin from the Plasma of Mouse”

CPSA 2005: 8th Annual Symposium on Chemical and Pharmaceutical Structure Analysis, Oct. 17 - 20th, 2005, Princeton, New Jersey.

Dr. Shane Needham will be teaching a Short Course on HPLC/MS Methods Development on Monday, October 17, 2005.

47th Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry (RMCAC), July 31 - Aug. 4th, 2005, Denver, Colorado.

13th North American International Society for the Study of Xenobiotics (ISSX) Meeting, October 23 - 27th, 2005, Maui, Hawaii.

Alturas Exhibits at AAPS

Alturas Analytics will be exhibiting at the Annual American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Meeting November 6-10, 2004 in Nashville, Tennessee. Please visit our booth, #362.

LC/MS Tech Tips

Now that LC/MS/MS is the dominant tool for measuring low levels of drugs and metabolites from biological fluids, the use of stable labeled isotopes as internal standards is crucial as the drug moves further into development. The FDA guidelines for bioanalytical validation and sample analysis have become more stringent therefore, improving the accuracy and precision of methods is critical.

The use of a stable labeled internal standard improves the accuracy and precision of analytical methods. A stable labeled internal standard accounts for differences due to adsorption, extraction, degradation, chromatography and instrument performance. Although costly and time consuming, the synthesis and use of a stable labeled internal standard produces a more accurate, precise and rugged method that is less prone to failure during method validation and sample analysis.