Liquid chromatography-mass future developments

Milk, milk proteins, and allergenic milk proteins are very well characterized. The tests that can be used for the determination of allergenic milk proteins range from well-documented protocols to newly developed methods. However, the choice of qualitative rapid tests is still scant and there is an increasing demand for suitable reference materials. A main goal for the future is the development of alternative reference methods such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis without the use of antibodies. 

Liquid chromatography—mass spectroscopy has become one of the most powerful analytical techniques in the drug discovery and development proeess. LC tandem MS is obviously the technique of choice for the identification of metabolites as illustrated in this chapter. Exact mass measurements and elemental composition assignment are essential for the characterization of the metabolites. Accurate mass measurements of the product ions, formed in an MS/MS experiment, greatly facilitate the structure elucidation of the metabolites. With the ever evolving technological advances in mass spectrometry and separation science, LC MS will continue to play an important role in metabolite identification in the future. 

High performance liquid chromatography is well established as a tool for the separation of mixtures of labile biological substances, but its combination with mass spectrometry (LC/MS) remains fraught with difficulties as a valid analytical procedure. Several new types of direct liquid introduction interfaces (as opposed to transport interfaces) have been developed recently and appear to offer promise for the future. The thermospray interface 44) has been used successfully for amino acids, small peptides, nucleosides, antibiotics and glucuronides. The spectra are the relatively simple ones commonly obtained from soft ionization methods and resemble those obtained by FABMS. A gas nebulizer interface has enabled representative spectra (resembling those generated from DCI) to be... 

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