Dilution and Sensitivity: Effects on a Food Contaminant Mega-Method

Regulations surrounding contaminant testing in foodstuffs, such as for pesticides, veterinary drugs and mycotoxins, generally fall under one or a few guidelines differentiated broadly by analyte type. One of the main challenges, however, lies in the fact that food matrices vary widely in their chemical composition and, in turn, their propensity for matrix effects and interferences. For this reason, sample preparation and analysis methods are often tailored specifically or modified slightly for each unique food matrix. This can have significant impacts on laboratory productivity, throughput and overhead costs; each unique method must be learned by lab technicians, supplies purchased for each preparation, and analysis methods run independently for each sub-class of analyte. In addition, with analyte lists ever growing, their chemical-physical properties have a greater propensity to overlap with those of the matrix further complicating sample clean-up.

In an ideal scenario, a single sample preparation and analysis method would be employed for all contaminants and food matrices analyzed by a particular laboratory. Often this is not possible due to the aforementioned matrix effects or sensitivity requirements for each panel. The sensitivity improvements of new generations of analytical instrumentation offer the ability to further dilute samples and mitigate the effect of matrix on the measurement of contaminants.

This presentation will explore how far we can push dilution while still meeting sensitivity requirements to simplify sample preparation and analysis workflows. With the SCIEX Triple Quad™ 7500 LC-MS/MS System– QTRAP® Ready, a single mega-method comprising hundreds of pesticides, veterinary drugs and mycotoxins will be analyzed from various food and feed matrices from a single sample preparation method.

By attending this presentation you will learn...

• techniques to increase the throughput for an entire assay, from method development to sample analysis and data processing
• how by leveraging the power of more sensitive instrumentations, to exploit these gains beyond lowing the LLOQ of an assay.

Who should attend?

This webinar will be applicable for laboratory technicians, method developers and lab managers looking to increase the throughput and productivity in their analytical laboratories.

Presenter: Dr Robert Di Lorenzo (Staff Scientist - Global Technical Marketing, Food & Beverage, SCIEX)

Robert received BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry from the University of Toronto and a PhD in analytical chemistry from Memorial University. During his PhD, Robert used targeted and non-targeted approaches with high-resolution mass spectrometry for the characterization of complex mixtures (i.e., biomass burning aerosols). Robert then completed a post-doc at the Hospital for Sick Children to develop high-throughput exposomic screening methods for identifying the role of contaminants on fetal development. Robert joined SCIEX in 2017 as an application scientist for the environmental, food, beverage and cannabis industries and has recently joined the Global Technical Marketing team as a Staff Scientist for Food and Beverage.