Development of CE-MALDI/MS method for quantitative determination of fluoroquinolones

VALERIA H. SPRINGER

Estocolmo

Seminario; Applied Physical Chemistry Seminar; 2012

Analytical Chemistry Section ? KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Fluoroquinolones have been applied in the treatment of infections in human and veterinary medicine. Their massive use has become a serious problem because residues can be found in the environment and in food of animal origin which may be directly toxic or cause human pathogens resistant to antibiotics and possible allergic hypersensitivity reactions in humans. Taking into account, several organisms (e.g. FDA, EU and WHO, among others) have established tolerance levels for these compounds in different samples in order to ensure the human health. Nowadays, the development of different methodologies of control is necessary considering the current legislations and the new international demands. In this work, a CE--MALDI-MS method for the quantitative determination of fluoroquinolones (FQs) is presented. The use of capillary electrophoresis (CE) provides fast separations and high resolving power employing low consumption of sample and reagent. Also, matrix assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) is a ionization technique that shows some advantages over other techniques due to few fragment ions signal and low sample consumption. In addition, a sample pretreatment step is included with the aim to realize the clean up of complex samples and preconcentration of analytes prior to analysis. In this case, multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are used as sorbent material in the solid phase extraction (SPE) procedure. Finally, the combination between CE and MALDI-MS allows the separation and correct identification of FQs compounds which makes this method suitable for control of this kind of antibiotics.