Excursions in biomedical mass spectrometry

Abstract

1Mass spectrometry (MS) has played a vital role in the research of the department of clinical pharmacology for over 25 years. 2MS has been used for trace analysis of endogenous compounds and xenobiotics in plasma and urine, and also for a wide range of structural studies. 3Examples of current applications are reported, including data from gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry (GC‐MS) assays for mevalonic acid, the identification of an antibiotic produced by Pseudomonas aeruginosa which is active against Helicobacter pylori, high pressure liquid chromatography (h.p.l.c)‐electrospray MS studies on steroid sulphates, the aspergillus ciliotoxin, gliotoxin, and ADP ribosyltransferase activity in human polymorphonuclear neutrophil leucocytes (PMNs). The value of electrospray MS in the molecular weight determination of proteins is exemplified by the analysis of human serum amyloid component P.

Detection of Aspergillus fumigatus mycotoxins: immunogen synthesis and immunoassay development

“…Previous analysis of gliotoxin has suggested that the molecule fragments when mass spectrometry is used as a means of detection (Taylor et al, 1996), thus it is likely that gliotoxin has been cleaved or degraded from BSA conjugates resulting in the appearance of an incorrect conjugate m/z ratio by mass spectrometry. Thus, we believe the estimate of 15 mol gliotoxin/mol BSA by SDS-PAGE is a more reliable estimate of hapten loading.…”