Table of Contents

MCF Spring Quarterly Meeting

Paul Jackson

A group of roughly 45 people met on the 19th of April to hear Dr. Peter Kissinger speak about a subject critical to virtually all chemical analysis methods - sampling - but this was not an ordinary sampling protocol since the subjects were live rodents.

Using a combination of robotics, computer interfaces, specifically designed containment systems, and 96 well plate SPE devices, Dr, Kissinger and his colleagues at Bioanalytical Systems are able to repeatedly sample blood from a single animal in order to build pharmacokinetic curves for drug substances. The sampling approaches reduce animal stress, improve data quality, reduce the number of animals required for the analysis, and provide appropriately prepared samples for subsequent analysis byLC-MS or other suitable chromatographic techniques.

Up to 4 independent animal sampling systems can be arranged on a mobile cart and controlled from a single laptop computer. The containment systems permit collection of animal waste products as well as provide the ability to monitor the animal movements during a test. Since the animals are not under anesthesia the data quality for pharmacokinetics are substantially improved. Replacement of 100 microliters of blood by physiological saline and returning excess blood back to the animal allows the robotic system to repeatedly sample from the same animal over the entire testing period, thus, minimizing animal dependent effects. Blood samples are then put into refrigerated, capped, sample vials. These vials may contain heparin saline if whole blood analysis is desirable, otherwise the blood plasma is ready accessible. Once in a simple vial format, continued automated processes are easily designed and implemented.

In the future, this type of automated system has the potential to expand the amount of data collected while continuing to minimize the animal and human costs associated with animal drug testing protocols. For more information, you can access www.bioanaly!ical.com and www.culex.net.

Minutes of the 29 March 2001 Board Meeting

Present: G Bailie, L Charpentier, S Cherney, D Eikens, P Jackson, J Jopke, R Ravichandran, P Sackett

Education Committee: The Committee agreed on a 10% cancellation fee for courses when the request is received within 10 business days of the course date, but no refund if the slot cannot be filled within that time. When wording is agreed upon the policy will be stated on all course descriptions and announcements. Courses for the Symposium are slowly filling, and 2001/2002 courses are being arranged. Beginning HPLC (6-8 November), Advanced HPLC (24-28 November) and Designed Experiments (5-7 February) have been scheduled so far, locations to be determined. Symposium Committee: Things are coming together, with booths selling nicely and abstracts being received. The Symposium was listed in the March issue of LC-GC, thanks to the Publicity subcommittee.

Website: David may set up "@minnchrom.org" e-mail addresses to automatically shunt inquiries to the appropriate Board or committee members. We cuffently have 13 vendor sponsors, and Chem Abstracts Service is interested, suggesting we have a highly attractive site.

Old Business: Jan will make arrangements to allow us to accept payment by credit card, with die understanding that refunds on payments made by card will be reimbursed via check to keep things as simple as possible. This offers the added benefit of card payments going directly to our bank account, maximizing interest earnings.

Back by Popular Demand!

November 6th - 8th, 2001: "Beginning HPLC",

Instructors: Larry Felice (Medtox) and David Johnson (3M)

November 27th -28th, 2001: " Advanced HPLC",

Instructor: Derek Southern (LC Resources)

February 5th - 7th, 2002: "Use of Designed Experiments in Chromatography",

Instructor: Lars Pekay (General Mills)

MCF Spring Symposium Technical Program