One drop chemical derivatization - DESI-MS analysis for metabolite structure identification

摘要

Structural elucidation of metabolites is an important part during the discovery and development process of new pharmaceutical drugs. Liquid Chromatography (LC) in combination with Mass Spectrometry (MS) is usually the technique of choice for structural identification but cannot always provide precise structural identification of the studied metabolite (e.g. site of hydroxylation and site of glucuronidation). In order to identify those metabolites, different approaches are used combined with MS data including nuclear magnetic resonance, hydrogen/deuterium exchange and chemical derivatization followed by LC-MS. Those techniques are often time-consuming and/or require extra sample pre-treatment.