Agilent Veterinary Drug LC/MS Personal Compound Database and Library

Significance of the Topic

Modern food safety and regulatory frameworks require robust monitoring of veterinary drug residues in animal-derived products. Comprehensive screening approaches help laboratories detect a wide range of compounds, safeguard public health, and comply with global standards.

Objectives and Study Overview

This study presents the Agilent Veterinary Drug Personal Compound Database and Library (PCDL) combined with accurate-mass LC/TOF and Q-TOF MS workflows. The goal is to enable simultaneous targeted, suspect and non-target screening of over 2,100 veterinary drugs, providing high confidence in compound identification and retrospective data analysis without sample re-injection.

Methodology and Instrumentation

The analytical workflow integrates high-resolution mass spectrometry with a curated compound database and software tools:

• Agilent 1290 Infinity II LC system for high-resolution chromatography and reduced run times
• Agilent 6200 Series TOF or 6500 Series Q-TOF LC/MS with All Ions MS/MS full-spectrum acquisition
• Accurate-mass Veterinary Drug PCDL containing >2,100 compounds, >1,500 MS/MS entries, and retention time data for >120 analytes
• Agilent PCDL Manager Software for library editing and custom compound entry
• Agilent MassHunter Acquisition, Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis Software for data collection and processing

Key Results and Discussion

The combined LC/TOF-PCDL approach successfully screened a broad panel of drug classes—including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, pesticides and beta-agonists—in a single run. Retrospective mining of full-spectrum data allowed detection of emerging contaminants and re-analysis of historical datasets. Fragment confirmation using All Ions workflow effectively eliminated false positives, as demonstrated for enrofloxacin, with signal-to-noise ratios improved by targeted MS/MS library matching.

Advantages and Practical Applications

Laboratories benefit from:

• High-throughput screening of predefined and unknown compounds in meat and food matrices
• Regulatory compliance with EU, U.S. and Asian food safety directives
• Customizable libraries to incorporate new or region-specific analytes
• Time and cost savings through retrospective data analysis without reruns

Future Trends and Opportunities

Ongoing developments may include:

• Expansion of spectral libraries with emerging veterinary drugs and metabolites
• Integration of machine-learning algorithms for automated suspect prioritization
• Cloud-based data sharing for collaborative surveillance networks
• Enhanced miniaturization and speed via novel ionization sources

Conclusion

The Agilent Veterinary Drug LC/MS PCDL workflow offers a unified, flexible and high-confidence solution for comprehensive screening of veterinary drugs. By combining accurate-mass acquisition, curated spectral libraries and advanced software tools, laboratories can improve detection capabilities, streamline workflows and maintain regulatory compliance.

References

• Council Directive 96/23/EC
• U.S. CFR Title 21 Part 556
• USDA Anal Bioanal Chem 2014
• China/Japan MOA Notice 235