Biological, Medical, and Clinical Analysis

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GC and TLC methods are demonstrated for quantification of stigmasterol 3-O-β-D-glucopyranoside (S3G), the main active component in the herbal nutraceutical Balanites aegyptiaca, an antihyperglycemic in Egyptian folk medicine.

Biomarker studies using exhaled breath are rapidly emerging as a technique for early disease detection and precision medicine. By offering a completely non-invasive experience for patients as an alternative to painful biopsy procedures. A new approach has the potential to enhance patient compliance, while making clinical workflows simpler. Exhaled breath analysis, however, requires a highly sensitive analytical technique capable of accurately measuring the broad range of volatiles present in breath. In this article, we present a proof-of-concept study to demonstrate a reliable and sensitive method to detect analytes in breath samples. Using high‑resolution accurate mass (HRAM) mass spectrometry (MS), the method validates how low- and high-abundance biomarkers can be quantified from exhaled breath.

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A novel modular bioreactor for dynamic in vitro studies has been set-up, connecting two-dimensional (2D) scaffolds and mimicking a multi-organ model, to study the absorption/metabolization of compounds. The effect of dietary methylglyoxal, a potentially exogenous and endogenous toxic compound, on a dynamic gastro-intestinal system has been evaluated. Bioreactors represent a powerful advance in comparison with conventional in vitro static assays and could be a potential alternative to animal testing in the future.

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The Column spoke to Nelson Roberto Antoniosi Filho, a professor at the Chemistry Institute of the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), in Goiânia, Brazil, about his development of a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method for cancer diagnosis using cerumen.

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Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is an important method for determining both dose and optimal effective level of a drug in the blood, preventing side effects such as kidney damage. Using the antibiotic classes aminoglycoside and vancomycin as examples, an analysis method is presented that combines fully automated sample preparation with ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography–triple quadrupole-mass spectrometry (UHPLC–TQMS).

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Characterization of protein modifications is an essential aspect of biopharmaceutical development. Traditionally, the characterization process of chromatographic peaks involves manual, larger-scale fractionation to obtain a sufficient amount of material for further analytical studies. This article presents a fully automated process for online peak fractionation and reduction of therapeutic antibodies with subsequent quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (QTOF-MS) characterization. This innovative technique significantly accelerates MS peak characterization compared to traditional approaches and avoids the risk of unintended modifications of the variants as a result of the isolation process, for example, deamidation during storage of isoforms. This approach considerably reduces the required sample amount and can be used for the characterization of product-related impurities during early stage development.