Speaker: Alexei Gapeev, Millis Scientific

Topic: Through the Looking Glass of Mass Spectrometry: Tales of Impurity Profiles

Date: Monday, December 19, 2016

Time: 6:15 pm Dinner, 7:15 pm: Presentation

Location: Shimadzu Scientific Instrument, Inc. Training Center 7100 Riverwood Drive, Columbia, MD 21046 (Directions)

Dinner: Please RSVP to Katherine Fiedler (Katherine.L.Fiedler@fda.hhs.gov) before November 21 if you will be attending the dinner or are a presenting as a vendor.

Abstract: Molecular archaeology constitutes a small but the most exciting segment of work we have done over the years. It aims to uncover a story an artifact may tell. Just as conventional archaeologists we sort through overburden looking for pertinent artifacts, study them at their current state, and strive to relate the present to the past.

A molecular archaeologist studies molecules, rather than tangible objects.
A contemporary LC- or GC-MS system with dynamic range spanning ten orders of magnitude is an indispensable tool to study artifacts, which are often present at trace level.

The objective of this presentation is to present the audience several case studies when we focused at impurity profiles to differentiate and source samples.

Type and origin of an explosive is one the most important questions to be addressed in a bombing investigation. We’ll explore one avenue to characterize nitramine explosives via their impurities and degradation products profile using LC-MS. This study may pave a road to development of a method to determine the manufacturing route and to estimate time of manufacture.

Assessing the likelihood of pregnancy might not sound like something relating to mass spectrometry or impurities profile. We’ll consider a situation when this indeed the case.

Oftentimes a product liability or outright consumer fraud case becomes a molecular archaeology’s poster child: A forensic scientist is asked to shine light on how an article in question was manufactured and how this relates to alleged maleficence.