Acquisition of two ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) systems

The Section of Forensic Chemistry belongs under the Dept. of Forensic Medicine. The section has around 35 employees and performs forensic toxicological investigation for the police and judicial system. This includes analyses of biological samples both from the living and the deceased. Additionally analyses of confiscated narcotic effects. The section also performs university tasks such as research and teaching on forensic toxicological topics.

The Section for Forensic Chemistry intends to procure two high-end ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) systems. The intended purpose for the systems is forensic quantitative analysis of drugs found at low concentrations in ante- and postmortem biological samples.

The procurement should include a service contract for 3 years including yearly preventative maintenance.

Section of Forensic Chemistry performs data analysis partly in the vendor software and partly in an established laboratory information management system (LIMS). It is therefore essential that the vendor software can sort, filter and present analytical results in combination with queries in the LIMS.

It is further important that external software can interact with the vendor software e.g. to build methods and sequences as well as submit analytical runs or system tests. To this end there is a demand that the vendor software employs open standard file formats (such as XML) for sequence, method, and result files.

Much of the analyst’s work is done during data analysis and it is therefore essential that the vendor software provides a way of incorporating custom tools for automating regular tasks and updating methods with run-specific limits.

Further, the vendor software should allow for customization of the user interface and allow for the analyst to easily get an overview of the analytical series. For this purpose, it should be possible to get interactive overviews of several chromatograms in the series, including overlay of selected peaks and flagging of outliers based on own analytical criteria.

The Section of Forensic Chemistry wishes to procure the 6495C Triple Quadrupole LC/MS system with the MassHunter software package from Agilent Technologies, as this equipment will allow the Section to process and analyze data from large analytical series efficiently and seamlessly.