Winners of the 2011 Excellence in SPE award

In what has become a much aniticipated tradition among the forensic toxicology community, UCT is to proud to announce the 2011 winners of the Excellence in SPE award. This award is presented by the CEO and President of UCT, Michael Telepchak, at the Elmer Gordon Forum during this years SOFT meeting. Being a joint meeting of SOFT and TIAFT this year, competition for this most coveted of award has been strongly contested. The awards committee at UCT has chosen 3 winners out of the many submissions who have shown outstanding results using SPE to further the development of forensic toxicology as an analytical science.

The first winner is Daniel Baker, IV of Franklin County Medical Examiners Office (Ohio) for his work on using SPE to extract weak acid/neutral drugs, bases including cocaine, and its metabolites by GC-MS in post mortem samples. Daniel is also presenting work at this years meeting on the subject of SPE extraction of opiates, a worthwhile winner indeed.

The 2nd winner is Dr. Matthew Juhascik, D-ABFT who investigated a novel compound (Benzoylecgonine Isopropyl Ester) in the analysis of cocaine metabolites in post mortem samples using a SPE methodology. Dr.Juhascik is based at UMass Memorial Hospital in Massachussetts.

Our 3rd winner hails from Australia. Nathan Sumner is receiving his award for his outstanding work in the extraction and analysis of the new "BathSalts " drugs i.e, the Cathinones such as methylone from biological samples. Nathan developed his SPE procedure for use with LC-MS/MS.

UCT would like to thank all the other authors for their SPE work, and would like to assure them that their work will be considered for next years meeting in Boston.

SOFT-TIAFT 2011 starts today

It is that time of year again for the annual SOFT meeting, this year being held in San Francisco, California. This year sees UCT unveiling 2 new and innovative products for use within the forensic community; the 96 well plate format positive pressure manifold, and Clean-Screen FASt (Filter and Shoot).

At this years meeting UCT's Dr. Jeff Hackett will be chairing the world famous UCT workshop on principles and applications of SPE in forensic toxicology along with Michael Telepchak and Dr. Michael Coyer. This workshop will also include presentations from an other forensic toxicolgist, Robert Sears. We will be presenting work submitted to UCT from users out in the field, this work includes the Analysis of GHB in urine (Albert Elian), Analysis of Opiates in post mortem blood (Daniel Baker), and from Dr. John Wyman a case involving MPDV fatality. UCT salutes these workers and hope that meeting attendees will visit the UCT booth and posters/presentations to learn why UCT is the premier SPE company, attendees can also enter the famous UCT grand draw which this year!

Poster from SOFT using CSDAU on a wide range of drugs

Presented at last year’s SOFT meeting (Richmond, VA) was a poster: Reduce Your Backlog: Adopt a Single Solid Phase Extraction Approach to Detect and Quantify Basic, Acidic/Neutral, Sympathomometic Amines, and Cocaine/Metabolites using Mini-Bore Fast GC/MS by Daniel D Baker IV, Franklin County Coroners Laboratory Ohio, that demonstrates the power and versatility of UCT's world renowned CSDAU SPE column. Daniel showed that this sorbent is a valuable tool in maximizing efficiency and productivity in Coroners and Medical Examiner’s laboratories. In extracting a wide and diverse range of drugs (including 12 amphetamine type, 68 basic and 12 weak acid neutrals) from post mortem blood (1 mL), Daniel demonstrated how 1 single column can reduce difficulties encountered worldwide by Forensic Toxicologists involved in this area of analysis.