Fluoroamphetamine and Clean Screen DAU

The number of new designer drugs is steadily rising and forensic toxicologists are being faced with providing results to assist coroners/medical examiners/enforcement agencies regarding the concentrations of these drugs in various bio-fluids. Forensic toxicologists know that the most important step is isolating these drugs from different, and often difficult matrices.  

In a recent report in ToxTalk (October 2013, pp14-15), Dr. Mark Lichtenwalner and his team (Onondaga County Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Syracuse NY) were faced with not only identifying and confirming, but offering results of the concentrations of 4-Fluoroamphetamine in post mortem and ante mortem samples of blood. Dr. Lichtenwalner employed the Clean Screen ZSDAU020 SPE column as the sorbent for this analysis, along with GC-MS. From his data, he was able to provide the medical examiners with an accurate time line of the drug in this case. This published report demonstrates that the sorbents made by UCT are applicable not only to a wide range of well known drug classes and medications but are able to be used with newer  drug classes also.

Highlights from SOFT 2012

At this years meeting of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists (SOFT) in Boston USA, UCT SPE products were shown for their high quality and efficiency over a wide range of projects. In a presentation given by Caroline Betit (Laurentian University Ontario,Canada), UCT Clean Screen DAU (CSDAU) was demonstrated in the extraction andanalysis of Pentobarbital in decomposed bone samples using GC-MS. Decomposed samples are always difficult for forensic toxicologists to analyze, and a veryclean extract (as produced by the Clean Screen DAU) is valuable in not only identifying drugs but also in quantifying the results.

The analysis of THC and its metabolites is a subject close to the heart of many forensic toxicologists charged with testing samples and interpreting the results, it is very important that samples can be extracted with high efficiency and reproducibility. In a presentation given by Dr. Gary Milman (NIDA, Baltimore, USA), UCT's StyreScreen THC (SSTHC) was shown to fill the need of high efficiency and reproducibility when analyzing samples of not only smoked cannabis but also synthetic cannabis in a clinical study at NIDA. The SSTHC was able to extract Dronabinol as well as THC, THC-OH, and Carboxy-THC from plasma samples using 2dimensional GC-MS.

In the area of post mortem toxicology, the Clean Screen DAU is world renowned for itsability to extract a wide and diverse range of compounds. Among this widerange, the Opiate class of drugs is no stranger to forensic toxicologists, in two presentations from Cuyahoga County Regional Forensic Science Laboratory (Ohio, USA), Claire Kaspar showed how the CSDAU could be used in the analysis of opiates especially heroin in post mortem cases. Her analysis centered on the determination of opiates in brain tissues as well as post mortem blood samples. The presentations showed off the power of the CSDAU in producing very clean extracts from very difficult matrices  In an independent  study undertaken by the Orange County Crime Laboratory (California, USA), Dani Mata demonstrated that the CSDAU in an automated setting can be used to combine 4 separate opiate analyses into 1 single procedure which not only increases productivity, but also efficiency in terms of instrumental time.  The presentation also showed the power of Solid Phase Extraction over Liquid-Liquid Extraction in the toxicology laboratory.