Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is an analytical technique that combines liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry. It has high sensitivity and selectivity. LC-MS is commonly used in pharmacokinetics studies to analyze drugs in biological samples. It is also used in proteomics to identify over 1000 proteins in complex samples like human serum. Additionally, LC-MS has various applications in drug development such as metabolite identification, quantitative bioanalysis, and quality control.

1. JSPM’S
Charak college of Pharmacy and Reaserch,
Gate No.720/1&2 Punenagar Road,Wagholi,Pune 412207
Liquid chromatography and Mass
Spectrometry
Presented By, Guided By,
Miss. Mayuri Shitre Dr. Rajesh J Oswal
Prof.Sandip Kshirsagar
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry

2. Content
 Introduction
 Liquid chromatography
 Mass spectrometry
 Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LCMS)
 Interface
 Application of LCMS

3. Introduction
 Definition:
 Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-
MS, or alternatively HPLC-MS) is an analytical
chemistry technique that combines the physical
separation capabilities of liquid chromatography,(or
HPLC) with the mass analysis capabilities of mass
spectrometry
 LC-MS is a powerful technique used for many
applications which has very high sensitivity and
selectivity.

4. Liquid Chromatography
 Scale:
A major difference between traditional HPLC and the
chromatography used in LC-MS is that in the latter case the
scale is usually much smaller, both with respect to the
internal diameter of the column and even more so with
respect to flow rate since it scales as the square of the
diameter.
 Flow splitting
When standard bore (4.6 mm) columns are used the flow
is often split ~10:1 . This can be beneficial by allowing the
use of other techniques in tandem such as MS and UV. The
mass spectrometry on the other hand will give improved
sensitivity at flow rates of 200 μL/m

5. Mass spectrometry
Instrumental Requirement:
 Ionisation source
Electron impact ioniser
Field ionisation technique
Thermal ionisation
Matrix assisted ionisation
 Ion collector:
Faraday cup collector
Electron multiplier

6. Analysers:
Double focousing
Quadrapole mass analyser
Time of flight spectrometer
Plasma desorption.

7. Instrumentation of LCMS
Sample
Introduction Ion Source Detector
(LC)
Read out System

8. Interface in LCMS
 Interface: The problem encounter when interface
HPLC with mass is mismatch between mass flow in
HPLC.
 The methods to overcome problems are:
 Thermospray method
 Monodisperse aerosol generation interface
 Moving Belt interface

9. Application of LCMS
1.Pharmacokinetics
 LC-MS is very commonly used in pharmacokinetics
studies of pharmaceuticals and is thus the most
frequently used technique in the field of bioanalysis .
 These studies give information about how quickly a
drug will be cleared from the hepatic blood flow, and
organs of the body.
 MS is used for this due to high sensitivity and
exceptional specificity compared to UV (as long as the
analyte can be suitably ionised), and short analysis
time.

10. • The major advantage MS has is the use of tandem MS-MS.
The detector may be programmed to select certain ions to
fragment. The process is essentially a selection
technique, but is in fact more complex.
•The measured quantity is the sum of molecule fragments
chosen by the operator. As long as there are no
interferences or ion suppression, the LC separation can be
quite quick.
•It is common now to have analysis times of 1 minute or less
by MS-MS detection, compared to over 10 mins with UV
detection

11. 2.Proteomics/ metabolomics
 LC-MS is also used in the study of proteomics where again
components of a complex mixture must be detected and
identified in some manner.
 Samples of complex biological fluids like human serum may
be run in a modern LC-MS/MS system and result in over 1000
proteins being identified, provided that the sample was first
separated on an SDS-PAGE gel or HPLC-SCX.

12. • The bottom-proteomics LC-MS approach to
proteomics generally involves protease digestion
and denaturation (usually trypsin as a
protease, urea to denature tertiary structure and
iodoacetamide to cap cystesine residues) followed
by LC-MS with peptide mass fingerprinting or LC-
MS/MS (tandem MS) to derive sequence of
individual peptides.LC-MS/MS is most commonly
used for proteomic analysis of complex samples
where peptide masses may overlap even with a
high-resolution mass spectrometer.

13. 3.Drug development
LC-MS is frequently used in drug development at many
different stages including Peptide Mapping, Glycoprotein
Mapping, Natural Products Dereplication, Bioaffinity
Screening, In Vivo Drug Screening, Metabolic Stability
Screening, Metabolite Identification, Impurity Identification,
Degradant Identification, Quantitative Bioanalysis, and
Quality Control.

14. Examples of compounds
suitable for LC/MS
analysis
Small Middle Large
Molecular weight < 1 Molecular weight 1 Molecular weight >
kDa -10 kDa 10 kDa
drugs, endogenous synthetic Large
compounds,vitamins, polypeptides and Molecular weight >
pesticides, polysaccharides 10 kDa
toxins,conjugates
(glucuronides, SO4)
of compounds with
m/z > 50