Electrospray ionization-mass pharmaceutical applications

A variety of MS formats are widely accepted and applied in the pharmaceutical industry. The specific MS application is often defined by the sample introduction technique. The pharmaceutical applications highlighted in this article feature two types of sample introduction techniques dynamic and static. Dynamic sample introduction involves the use of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) on-line with MS. The resulting liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) format provides unique and enabling capabilities for pharmaceutical analysis. The electrospray ionization (ESI) and atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) modes are the most widely used. Static sample introduction techniques primarily use matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI). ... 

The advent of electrospray ionization certainly opened many new application areas for mass spec-trometric analysis. This is based on the ability to provide extreme soft liquid-based ionization. Perhaps the most important application area is the analysis of peptides and proteins. The possibility to perform rapid molecular-weight determination of proteins up to 200 kDa stimulated the commercial availability of MS instrumentation featuring atmospheric-pressure ion sources, equipped with electrospray ionization. Other application areas benefited from these developments. LC-MS has become an important analytical tool in many areas of drug development within the pharmaceutical industry, in the study of natural products in plants, in food and environmental analysis. It is about to enter the clinical application area for therapeutic drug monitoring, systematic toxicological analysis, and monitoring of inherited metabolic diseases. 

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