Collaboration to Advance Forensic Testing Announced

Sciex have announced a research collaboration with Labor Berlin, the largest clinical laboratory in Germany, for the development of a hybrid Quadrupole Time-of-Flight (TOF) MS/MS reference library of relevant forensic chemical compounds. The library will cover thousands of chemical substances, allowing users of Sciex TripleTOF® 6600 mass spectrometers for forensic testing to more effectively and efficiently develop and validate new analytical methods for forensic compound screening. The reference library generated by this collaboration will ultimately allow forensic scientists to identify and analyse unknown substances or toxins, including pharmacological agents or forensic drugs in samples more easily, accurately and with more confidence.

The generation of the hybrid Quadrupole TOF library of chemical substances used in conjunction with mass spectrometry techniques is particularly important for applications in forensic toxicology. Forensic samples may contain unknown substances that a person may have ingested up to several weeks prior to the sample being taken. Therefore, forensic testing requires a precise, sensitive and robust approach to sample analysis.

Labor Berlin will provide the pharmacological input to the collaboration and Sciex, a global leader in life science analytical technologies, will assemble the hybrid Quadrupole TOF library using its expertise and highly robust and reliable instrumentation. 

“These library databases offer benefits to forensic testing scientists to enable them to detect the latest emerging novel psychoactive substances, and their metabolites, to enhance their forensic discovery screening workflows,” said Vincent Paez, Sr. Director, Food, Environmental and Forensics Testing at Sciex.  A key feature of the library database is the inclusion of spectra collected in authenticated samples, providing relevant metabolite spectral information which is difficult to discover by other means.

“We chose to collaborate with Sciex because it is a manufacturer of superior analytical products, and the collaboration with Labor Berlin will make it possible to generate methods for almost any substance,” said Dr Torsten Binscheck-Domaß, Head of the Clinical and Forensic Toxicology Department at Labor Berlin. “The hybrid Quadrupole TOF library is the first part of the collaboration, and we are in discussions about other larger projects that will be possible with Sciex in the future.”