Protti Michele, Rudge James, Sberna Angelo Eliseo, Gerra Gilberto, Mercolini Laura
Laboratory of Pharmaco-Toxicological Analysis, Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology (FaBiT), Alma Mater Studiorum-University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
Neoteryx LLC, Torrance, CA, USA.
J Chromatogr B Analyt Technol Biomed Life Sci. 2017 Feb 15;1044-1045:77-86. doi: 10.1016/j.jchromb.2016.12.038. Epub 2016 Dec 30.
Synthetic cannabinoids are new psychoactive substances (NPS) with similar effects when compared to natural ones found in Cannabis derivatives. They have rapidly integrated into the illicit market, often sold as alternatives under international control. The need to identify and quantify an unprecedented and growing number of new compounds represents a unique challenge for toxicological, forensic and anti-doping analysis. Dried blood spots have been used within the bioanalytical framework in place of plasma or serum, in order to reduce invasiveness, lower sample size, simplify handling, storage and shipping of samples and to facilitate home-based and on-field applications. However, DBS implementation has been limited mainly by concerns related to haematocrit effect on method accuracy. Volumetric absorptive microsampling (VAMS™), a second generation dried miniaturized sampling technology, has been developed just in order to eliminate haematocrit effect, thus providing accurate sampling but still granting feasible sample processing. An original LC-MS/MS method was herein developed and validated for the analysis of THC and its 2 main metabolites, together with 10 representative synthetic cannabinoids in both DBS and VAMS dried microsamples. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide highly innovative DBS and VAMS analytical protocols, whose performances were extensively optimized and compared, in order to provide effective and alternative tools that can be applied for natural and synthetic cannabinoid determination, in place of classical analytical strategies.
合成大麻素是一类新型精神活性物质（NPS），与大麻衍生物中的天然大麻素具有相似的效果。它们迅速融入非法市场，常作为国际管制物质的替代品出售。识别和量化数量空前且不断增加的新化合物的需求，对毒理学、法医学和反兴奋剂分析而言是一项独特的挑战。在生物分析框架内，干血斑已被用于替代血浆或血清，以减少侵入性、降低样本量、简化样本的处理、储存和运输，并便于家庭和现场应用。然而，干血斑的应用主要受到血细胞比容对方法准确性影响的限制。体积吸收微采样（VAMS™），一种第二代微型干血采样技术，正是为消除血细胞比容的影响而开发的，从而提供准确的采样，同时仍能保证可行的样本处理。本文开发并验证了一种原创的液相色谱-串联质谱（LC-MS/MS）方法，用于分析四氢大麻酚（THC）及其两种主要代谢物，以及干血斑和VAMS微型干血样本中的10种代表性合成大麻素。这项工作的最终目标是提供高度创新的干血斑和VAMS分析方案，其性能经过广泛优化和比较，以提供有效的替代工具，可用于天然和合成大麻素的测定，取代传统的分析策略。
