LCGC’s Annual Buyer's Guide & Industry Trends issue is the most comprehensive resource for any chromatographer looking for the latest chromatography-related suppliers, products or services, organized in categories specific to their needs. The Buyer's Guide and Industry Trends issue continues to be a trusted and valued resource among the most influential buyers in the industry.

LCGC’s 2014 Buyer’s Guide will include trends coverage with excerpts from interviews and articles in the environmental, food, pharma, and forensics categories.

ENVIRONMENTAL:

Using HPLC–MS-MS to Detect Pharmaceutical Contaminants in Water
LCGC recently spoke with Edward T. Furlong of the Methods Research and Development Program at the National Water Quality Laboratory with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) about his group’s work on developing new methods to detect pharmaceutical contaminants in waterways.

Striking Oil: Separation Science in Marine Pollution Analysis
Chris Reddy from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution spoke to LCGC about the role of chromatography in the ongoing environmental analysis of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, how comprehensive GCXGC works in practice, and why this oil spill led to the return of thin layer chromatography (TLC) to his laboratory.

FOOD:

IFSTL Q&A  
The Column spoke to Stewart Reynolds, Senior Science Specialist at FERA and Head of the UK National Reference Laboratory for Pesticide Residues, about the challenges that food analysts face and how the standards of food analysis are being boosted to comply with internationally recognized food safety standards and EU regulations.

Nicholas Snow Q&A   [sample prep]
Nicholas H. Snow of Seton Hall University, New Jersey, USA, spoke to Kate Mosford about the importance of SPME in food analysis.

PHARMA:

Trends in Pharmaceutical Analysis: A Technology Forum
LCGC spoke with experts in the pharmaceutical industry about current and emerging trends in pharmaceutical analysis, including the use of LC-MS instead of LC-UV for routine assays, best practices for impurity profiling, and areas where commonly used methods are likely to improve.

Current Trends in Chiral Chromatography
More than 60% of newly commercialized drugs possess chiral properties, and this is set to grow as the biopharmaceutical industry flourishes. Professor Debby Mangelings from the Vrije Universiteit in Belgium, spoke to LCGC about the importance of chiral chromatography in pharmaceutical analysis, the challenges facing analysts, and where the field is headed next.

FORENSICS:

LC-MS-Based Methods for Identifying Drugs of Abuse in Oral Fluids for Forensic Toxicology Applications
Adrian Michael Taylor, AB Sciex
Forensic toxicology screening methods are widely used to test biological samples for the presence of pharmaceutical drugs as well as drugs of abuse, and/or their metabolites. Screening has most commonly been carried out on urine or blood samples, using immunoassays or gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). However, these methods have various limitations that include risks of false positives and false negatives, lack of specificity, and limited throughput. Moreover, these methods are unable to keep up with continual developments relating to drug abuse. For example, they are not suitable for detecting drugs from numerous different classes simultaneously, and are not always easy to adapt for detecting new drugs. In recent years, forensic toxicology laboratories have begun developing liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based methods for drug screening. This article reviews key developments and potential advantages of using LC-MS for forensic toxicology, including the option of using oral fluid samples.