Special Issues-03-01-2014

The production and sale of counterfeit drugs has risen sharply in recent years. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that counterfeit medicines account for approximately 1% of sales in developed countries and well over 10% in developing countries.

Despite the advantages of soft ionization ion-source technologies for improving confidence in the identification of a range of challenging analytes, soft ionization remains a niche technique for gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).

Translational proteomics has not been as successful as originally anticipated. Because mass spectrometry (MS) can separate proteins at the sequence level, it provides the selectivity needed for this application; however, traditional challenges still exist, including time-to-result, throughput, and sample-size requirements.

Here, a method to characterize edible oils and edible oil mixtures through fingerprinting and the isolation of individual analyte differences is reported. Aroma and flavor analytes in extra virgin olive, olive, peanut, grapeseed, and vegetable oils were sampled with headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME).

Click the title above to open the March 2014 issue of Current Trends in Mass Spectrometry, Volume 12, Number 1, in an interactive PDF format.