LC-MS/MS for Chromatographers

With the introduction of the mass spectrometer (MS) as a practical detector for a high-performance liquid chromatograph (LC or HPLC) in the early 1990s, LC-MS began to be used for routine applications. One form of LC-MS uses a tandem MS (LC-MS/MS), that has become the go-to instrument for quantitative analysis of drugs in biological matrices in the pharmaceutical laboratory. As they have become more widely used and understood, LC-MS and LC-MS/MS have found their way into environmental applications, synthetic chemistry, protein analysis, and many other areas. LC-MS/MS has moved from a technique available only to skilled experts in both HPLC and MS to a routine tool usable much as any other HPLC detector.

You will find that this introductory course in LC-MS/MS will give you a good foundation of understanding the technique and how to use it in your daily work. We start out with an overview of different MS techniques, and focus in the majority of the course on the quadrupole mass spectrometer. You will learn how MS works, how ions are produced and fragmented. Sections focus on qualitative, as well as quantitative analysis. Each part of the process, calibration, tuning, sample preparation, HPLC method development, and MS method development are covered. Many tricks and techniques of practical use are presented.

Here’s what the course covers:

• MS operation, including the operation of the most popular LC-MS interfaces
• How a quadrupole mass filter works
• MS calibration and optimization
• Ion production, fragmentation, and detection
• Operation in MS, MS/MS, and MS/MS/MS modes
• Structure determination by product ion analysis
• Quantitative analysis
• Sample preparation
• Method development
• Validation
• Techniques to get the most from your LC-MS