Development of a qualitative liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometric method for the detection of narcotics in urine relevant to doping analysis

A new screening procedure for 18 narcotics in urine for anti-doping purposes has been developed using liquid chromatography/triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC/MS). Electrospray ionization (ESI) was used as interface. Infusion experiments were performed for all substances to investigate their mass spectrometric behaviour in terms of selecting product specific ions. These product ions were then used to develop a tandem mass spectrometric method using selected reaction monitoring (SRM). For the LC/MS analysis, chromatography was performed on an octadecylsilane column. The total run time of the chromatographic method was 5.5 min. For the sample preparation prior to LC/MS analysis, the urine samples were liquid-liquid extracted at pH 9.5 after overnight enzymatic hydrolysis. Two extraction solvents were evaluated: dichloromethane/methanol 9/1 (v/v), which is currently used for the extraction of narcotics, and diethyl ether, used for the extraction of steroids. With diethyl ether the detection limits for all compounds ranged between 0.5 and 20 ng/mL and with the mixture containing dichloromethane the detection limits ranged between 0.5 and 10 ng/mL. Taking into account the minimum required performance limits of the World Anti-Doping Agency of 200 ng/mL for narcotics, diethyl ether can also be considered as extraction solvent for narcotics. Finally, the described method was applied to the analysis of urine samples previously found to contain narcotics by our routine gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) method.     

Aza-substitution,benzo-annulation effects and catalytic activity of <Emphasis Type="Italic">β</Emphasis>-octaphenyl-substituted tetrapyrrolic macroheterocyclic cobalt complexes. I. heterogeneous catalysis

The influence of the size of conjugated π-system on catalytic activity of cobalt complex with β-octaphenylporphyrin and its tetraaza-, tetrabenzo and tetrabenzotetraaza derivatives was studied in present work. It is found that catalytic activity for oxidation of sulfur-containing compounds increases under extension of conjugated macrocycle system according to the following series CoP < CoBP ≤ CoPz < CoPPz ? CoPc.     

Personalized Metabolic Profile by Synergic Use of NMR and HRMS

A new strategy that takes advantage of the synergism between NMR and UHPLC–HRMS yields accurate concentrations of a high number of compounds in biofluids to delineate a personalized metabolic profile (SYNHMET). Metabolite identification and quantification by this method result in a higher accuracy compared to the use of the two techniques separately, even in urine, one of the most challenging biofluids to characterize due to its complexity and variability. We quantified a total of 165 metabolites in the urine of healthy subjects, patients with chronic cystitis, and patients with bladder cancer, with a minimum number of missing values. This result was achieved without the use of analytical standards and calibration curves. A patient’s personalized profile can be mapped out from the final dataset’s concentrations by comparing them with known normal ranges. This detailed picture has potential applications in clinical practice to monitor a patient’s health status and disease progression.     

Two negative minima of the first normal stress difference in a cellulose‐based cholesteric liquid crystal: Helix uncoiling

The shear rate dependence of material functions such as shear viscosity (η) and the first normal stress difference (N₁) were given and interpreted earlier by Kiss and Porter. Their widely accepted work revealed the possibility of having a negative minimum of N₁ for polymeric liquid crystals. In this work, we disclose for the first time the evidence of two negative N₁ minima on a sheared cellulosic lyotropic system. The lower shear rate minimum is ascribed to the uncoiling of the cholesteric helix, as theoretically predicted earlier. Our findings contribute also to the understanding of the other minimum already reported in the literature and attributed to the nematic director tumbling mode. Moreover, the elastic change that the LC‐HPC sample undergoes during the helix unwinding of the cholesteric structure is also by means of oscillatory measurements. This study is a contribution for the understanding of the structure‐properties relationship linked with the complex rheological behavior of chiral nematic cellulose‐based systems and may help to improve their further processing. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2017 , 55, 821–830     

Tumor Carbohydrate Associated Antigen Analogs as Potential Binders for Siglec-7

We investigated two recently synthesized and characterized sialyl derivatives, bearing the Neu5Ac-α-(2-6)-Gal epitope, as promising binders for Siglec-7, an inhibitory Siglec mainly found on natural killer cells. A variety of sialoglycan structures can be recognized by Siglec-7 with implications in the modulation of immune responses. Notably, overexpression of sialylated glycans recognized by Siglec-7 can be associated with the progression of several tumors, including melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. NOE-based NMR techniques, including Saturation Transfer Difference and transferred-NOESY NMR, together with molecular docking and dynamic simulations were combined to shed light on the molecular basis of Siglec-7 recognition of two conformationally constrained Sialyl-Tn antigen analogs. We, therefore, identify the ligands epitope mapping and their conformational features and propose 3D models accurately describing the protein-ligand complexes. We found that the binding site of Siglec-7 can accommodate both synthetic analogs, with the sialic acid mainly involved in the interaction. Moreover, the flexibility of Siglec-7 loops allows a preferred accommodation of the more rigid compound bearing a biphenyl moiety at position 9 of the sialic acid that contributed to the interaction to a large extent. Our findings provided insights for developing potential novel high affinity ligands for Siglec-7 to hinder tumor evasion.     

Complete rotation hypersurfaces with Hk constant in space forms

In this paper we classify all complete rotation hypersurfaces withH _k constant in ⁿ⁺¹ andH ⁿ⁺¹, is the normalizedk-th symmetric function of the principal curvatures. Partial results are also given forH ⁿ⁺¹.Partially supported by DGAPA-UNAM, México, CONACYT, México, under Project 1068P, and CNPp, Brazil.     

A generalization of the fast LUP matrix decomposition algorithm and applications

We show that any m × n matrix A, over any field, can be written as a product, LSP, of three matrices, where L is a lower triangular matrix with l's on the main diagonal, S is an m × n matrix which reduces to an upper triangular matrix with nonzero diagonal elements when the zero rows are deleted, and P is an n × n permutation matrix. Moreover, L, S, and P can be found in O(m^α?1n) time, where the complexity of matrix multiplication is O(m^α). We use the LSP decomposition to construct fast algorithms for some important matrix problems. In particular, we develop O(m^α?1n) algorithms for the following problems, where A is any m × n matrix: (1) Determine if the system of equations $\text{A}\text{x}\text{=}\text{b}$ (where $\text{b}$ is a column vector) has a solution, and if so, find one such solution. (2) Find a generalized inverse, $\text{A}{}^1$, of A (i.e., $\text{AA}{}^1\text{A = A}$). (3) Find simultaneously a maximal independent set of rows and a maximal independent set of columns of A.