Tox analyzer based on Symbiosis Pico

The Institute of Toxicology in the Clinical Toxicology and Poison Information Centre Berlin (BBGes) has developed a novel system for routine toxicological screening in close collaboration with Spark Holland. The objective was to develop a reliable and fully-automated on-line extraction screening method (XLC-QqTOF) for the detection of unknown xenobiotics in human plasma/serum samples and to employ platform-independent low/high resolution mass spectral reference libraries and high mass resolution spectra to produce a comprehensive report. For compound identification a new library search and identification algorithm for Q-TOF instruments was developed based on SmileMS library search software from GeneBio, Geneva.

“The unique automated cartridge exchange capability of the Symbiosis front-end system enables selection of a fresh SPE cartridge for every sample. This is very effective to reduce cross contamination between samples. On-line SPE also eliminates a number of sample transfer steps which provides a highly automated workflow for highest confidence. These aspects are very important in tox screening practice”

Dr. Thomas Grobosch, leading the project at BBGes.