Streamlining Forensic Toxicology Workflows for Smarter Drug Screening and Confirmation
The rise of novel psychoactive substances (NPS), coupled with the continued prevalence of traditional drugs of abuse, continues to pose serious public and safety issues. This fast-moving and ever-changing landscape places significant demands on forensic toxicology laboratories, driving the need for robust, efficient, and adaptable analytical methodologies to ensure comprehensive drug screening. LC-MS/MS provides a versatile platform to meet these challenges, offering a spectrum of approaches—from targeted, nominal-mass instrumentation for focused suspect screening to non-targeted, accurate-mass workflows capable of detecting and identifying unknown compounds.
This webinar will showcase two LC-MS/MS-based strategies designed to streamline toxicology testing and improve laboratory efficiency. The first is a semi-quantitative screening method for 500 compounds using a QTRAP system, enabling identification and relative abundance categorization of compounds in blood and urine samples. The second is a QTOF-based method that integrates screening and confirmation of 976 analytes across 35 drug classes, tailored for postmortem (PM), driving under the influence of drugs (DUID), and drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) casework. This comprehensive workflow not only enhances operational consistency and throughput but also provides the adaptability required to respond to emerging drug threats.
The webinar will demonstrate how the implementation of these two LC-MS/MS workflows can significantly reduce turnaround times and manual data review, ultimately improving the reliability and efficiency of routine casework in forensic toxicology.
Key Learnings for Attendees:
- Gain insights into emerging challenges posed by novel psychoactive substances (NPS) and traditional drugs of abuse, and their impact on forensic toxicology workflows
- Explore advanced LC-MS/MS strategies that reduce turnaround and manual review time for postmortem, DUID and drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) casework
- Learn how LC-MS/MS can increase efficiency and reliability in routine casework while improving confidence in results
Presenter: Maria Sarkisian (Forensic Toxicologist and Method Development Specialist, San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner)
Presenter: Dr. Dick-Paul Kloos (Forensic Scientist, Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI))
