Portable Liquid Chromatograph for Point-of-Care Monitoring of Illicit Substances

Project Summary Abstract
Point of carePOCtesting of clinical samples for the presence of illegal substances and their metabolites is
important for monitoring substance use disordersemployment screeningand legal matters relating to drug
abstinenceTypical immunoassay screening methods suffer from higher false testing rates and do not provide
quantitative informationConfirmatory tests that are used for quantitative analysis rely on chromatographic
separations coupled with mass spectrometricMSdetectionwhich requires expensive instrumentation and
technical expertise for operationIn this research projecta prototype liquid chromatographyLCinstrument with
integrated LED UV detection will be developed for the purpose of POC screening of illicit drugs in clinical
samplesThe system includes integrated separation column cartridgeswhich makes column installation much
simpler than with traditional instrumentation that requires additional tubing and fittingsA control program that
runs on a miniaturized computer with an integrated touch screen user interface is then used for instrument control
and data acquisitionA method library for the separation of different classes of illicit substances will be developed
on standard LC instrumentation using a variety of columns packed with different particle types and stationary
phase selectivitiesThese methods will then be translated to the prototype system where users will be able to
select a method for a given drug test panelwhich reduces the technical expertise required to obtain
concentration data on the tested samplesWith this instrumentthe integrated column cartridge is designed for
dual LED UV detection so that a single analyte is measured at two different absorbance wavelengths to provide
positive identification using a new data analysis tool referred to as thedetection capacityThe absorbance ratio
for a given peak provides qualitative identificationwhich will ensure that each analyte is accounted for
individually during the separationPotential customers for this new products currently involved in the analysis of
illicit substances will collaborate on the project to ensure that the results correlate well with the current methods
employed for this applicationThe results generated by this new system will be faster and provide more analyte
information that the standard immunoassay screening tests currently usedproviding an important new
commercial tool for POC drug monitoring Project Narrative
Point of care monitoring of illegal substance abuse typically relies on immunoassay based qualitative methods
to analyze clinical samplesThis project focuses on the development of a portable liquid chromatography system
with integrated user control software that can be used to perform point of care analyses of illicit drug
concentrations in such samples with more information provided than these current screening methods