WCDG meets monthly September to May and typically on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, unless otherwise noted. Meetings are public and include a light dinner & social hour followed by a speaker.
Email us at washchrom@gmail.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.
May Meeting
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
USP, 12601 Twinbrook Pkwy, Rockville, MD 20852
6:00 PM dinner & social
7:00 PM presentation
Speaker: Ira Lurie, George Washington University
Title: Recent Developments in the Analysis of Emerging Drugs
Abstract: The use of emerging drugs created to circumvent the controlled substances laws has greatly increased over the last few years. “Designer drugs” are created by slightly modifying the chemical structure of a controlled substance. The use of these drugs has led to many deaths in the USA, especially for the abuse of fentanyl related compounds. GC-MS with electron ionization is the method of choice employed for the screening and confirmation of these solutes. LC-MS with electrospray ionization, is most commonly employed by some laboratories as an additional confirmatory method. The analysis of positional and stereoisomers can be particularly difficult using the above techniques, due to similarity in MS fragmentation, and scarcity of information in EI fragmentation for certain classes. The analysis of emerging drugs is complicated because many of them do not give a molecular ion using GC-MS with electron ionization. Therefore a chromatographic separation and additional detection techniques become of upmost importance for the identification of emerging drug. This presentation will demonstrate the utility of UHPSFC for the analysis of emerging drugs, especially for positional isomers and diastereomers. The use of two UHPSFC columns in tandem to increase overall resolution will be presented. In addition the utility of UV detection in both the liquid and gas phase and cold EI to aid in the identification of emerging drugs will be discussed. Finally the use of multi-dimensional chromatography to reduce uncertainty of retention time measurements will be detailed.
Bio: Ira Lurie a research professor at George Washington University received his BA in chemistry from Queens College, his MS in chemistry from Rutgers University and his PhD. in chemistry from University of Amsterdam under the guidance of Professor Peter Schoenmakers. Dr. Lurie served almost 40 years as both a forensic chemist and senior research chemist with the Drug Enforcement Administration, where he last served as the agency’s expert in liquid phase separations. He is the author of over 70 publications including several book chapters and a co-edited book entitled HPLC in Forensic Chemistry. Professor Lurie is the winner of the 2015 Paul Kirk award, the highest form of recognition one could receive from the criminalistics section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.