Mass spectrometry boasts rapid development and mature technology, playing an increasingly important role in fields such as food safety, environmental protection, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and forensic and criminal investigation. As an emerging high-end technique in clinical tests, mass spectrometry is revitalizing the IVD market. Compared with traditional immunodetection, mass spectrometry has higher detection sensitivity, versatility and analytical speed, and can realize the simultaneous detection of multiple indicators. Mass spectrometry has a promising future in the fields of newborn metabolic screening, vitamin tests, determination of steroid hormones and therapeutic drug monitoring.
Agilebio has independently developed the following automated instruments and consumables for clinical mass spectrometry.
| Industry solutions | S/N | Product name | Category |
| Automated instruments and consumables for IVD | 1 | Airplate P96 positive pressure solid phase extraction device | instrument |
| 2 | Airplate N96 nitrogen blowing concentrator | instrument | |
| 3 | Airplate N96 nitrogen blowing concentrator | instrument | |
| 4 | Auto M32 automated sample pretreatment system | instrument | |
| 5 | Automs Y96 automated pipetting workstation | instrument | |
| 6 | NE32-S automated nucleic acid extractor | instrument | |
| 7 | Pre-packed columns/kits for chromatographic separation/extraction/purification | Supplies |
Auto M32 automated sample pretreatment system adopts new sample extraction techniques and a new type of magnetic mesoporous materials developed by Agilebio to adsorb separation materials with magnetic rods, enabling full automation of processes of activation, sample loading, washing and elution for sample extraction and purification before LC-MS analysis.
Extraction process with new magnetic materials
Application: WCX Plus magnetic extraction material—catecholamines
Recovery and parallelism
The table below shows the parallel analysis results of six catecholamine targets in the normal human plasma. The recoveries range from 95.2% to 116% and RSD from 1.4% to 9.3%.
| Compound | Recovery（%） | RSD（%）,n=2 |
| DA | 100 | 4.6 |
| 3-MT | 103 | 8.6 |
| E | 95.2 | 9.3 |
| NE | 113 | 1.9 |
| MN | 116 | 1.4 |
| NMN | 109 | 3.9 |
ISTD peak area reproducibility
As shown in the table below, the results of six parallel analyses of standard samples taken from plasma with a concentration of 0.2 ng/mL (3-MT, 0.02 ng/mL) showed that the RSD of the ISTD peak areas ranged from 4.4% to 9.7%.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | RSD（%） | |
| DA | 6463.414 | 5890.268 | 6446.041 | 5638.473 | 7295.949 | 6972.265 | 9.7 |
| 3-MT | 15310.61 | 14779.61 | 15997.64 | 14174.88 | 16351.4 | 15895.52 | 5.4 |
| E | 998.934 | 1220.293 | 1213.724 | 1275.245 | 1414.716 | 1402.288 | 12 |
| NE | 17718.87 | 17465.77 | 18156.8 | 17045.62 | 19233.23 | 18961.66 | 4.8 |
| MN | 17245.73 | 16635.67 | 18121.86 | 16038.84 | 17856.48 | 17611.18 | 4.6 |
| NMN | 11492.5 | 11251.39 | 12438.7 | 10977.81 | 11777.71 | 11840.67 | 4.4 |
Standard curves
The linearity and accuracy of the standard curves of six catecholamines are shown in the following table.
| Compound | Linear regression equation | R2 |
| DA | y = 7.234x – 0.0865 | 0.9998 |
| 3-MT | y = 5.9234x + 0.0015 | 0.9998 |
| E | y = 22.589x – 0.5422 | 0.9994 |
| NE | y = 2.4097x + 0.0495 | 0.9998 |
| MN | y = 6.452x – 0.0265 | 0.9999 |
| NMN | y = 6.2451x – 0.0295 | 0.9999 |
Conclusion:
The above data show that WCX Plus magnetic extraction materials, together with the Auto M32 automated sample pretreatment system, can extract and purify catecholamine targets in plasma. This method has been proven with good linearity, accuracy and precision through LC-MS/MS analysis, meeting the methodological requirements of basic quantitative analysis. Furthermore, the magnetic solid-phase extraction (mSPE) technique combined with the Auto M32 automated sample pretreatment system greatly reduces the labor costs for pipetting operation and human real-time monitoring of traditional SPE and significantly reduces the influence of human factors in pretreatment.
