Dr Jason Raymond
About
My research project
Tracking plastic particles and co-contaminants in the food web at environmentally realistic concentrationsThis project would utilise a novel approach of radiolabelling plastic particles as well as their co-contaminants in order to detect and quantify them at the very low levels in which they exist in environmental systems. This will also provide the ability to track these plastic particles through complex marine environments and the food web into marine organisms.
Supervisors
This project would utilise a novel approach of radiolabelling plastic particles as well as their co-contaminants in order to detect and quantify them at the very low levels in which they exist in environmental systems. This will also provide the ability to track these plastic particles through complex marine environments and the food web into marine organisms.
Publications
This study presents, for the first time, the development and validation of a liquid chromatography and time‐of‐flight mass‐spectrometry (LC–TOF–MS) based assay to quantify mycophenolic acid (MPA) in patient samples as part of a routine therapeutic drug monitoring service. MPA was extracted from 50 μl human plasma by protein precipitation, using sulindac as internal standard (IS). Separation was obtained on a Luna™ Omega polar C18 column kept at 40°C. The mobile phase consisted of a mixture of acetonitrile–deionized water (50:50, v/v) with 0.1% formic acid at a flow rate of 350 μl/min. Analyte and IS were monitored on a TOF–MS using a Jet‐Stream™ (electrospray) interface running in positive mode. Assay performance was evaluated by analysing patient plasma (N = 69) and external quality assessment (N = 6) samples. The retention times were 2.66 and 2.18 min for MPA and IS, respectively. The lower limit of quantification of MPA was 0.1 μg/ml. The within‐ and between‐assay reproducibility results ranged from 1.81 to 10.72%. Patient and external quality assessment sample results were comparable with those obtained previously by an in‐house validated LC–MS/MS method. This method showed satisfactory analytical performance for the determination of MPA in plasma over the calibration range of 0.1–15.0 μg/ml.