Forensic Toxicology

http://press.appliedbiosystems.com/corpcomm/applerapress.nsf/ABIDisplayPress/8B1EAC0EB0BED97888257375001345E5?OpenDocument&type=abi

Petrucci, Anthony. "New Forensic Toxicology Application from Applied Biosystems/MDS SCIEX Improves Accuracy of Screening for Drugs of Abuse." Applied Biosystems Press Release 15 10 2007

As the number of drugs and pharmaceuticals continues to grow, the technology used to identify them must improve as well. The need for fast and accurate analysis of substances in the investigation of crimes fuels much of this need for constantly improving technology. As forensic techniques continue to improve with improving technology, forensic toxicology is must not be left behind.

Forensic toxicology is a field involving the analysis and interpretation of toxins and/or drugs found in specimens. This field has an enormous number of uses: it can determine how much alcohol a drunk driver has had, whether a rape victim was drugged, or whether a murder victim was poisoned. However, the sheer number of possible substances can make testing difficult and time consuming.

Applied Biosystems and Sciex’s recently introduced the Cliquid™ Drug Screen and Quant Software for Routine Forensic Toxicology application, a new method of toxicological analysis. It utilizes chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the components of a substance instead of older methods, like UV-based liquid chromatography or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The new process promises to reduce the time it takes to analyze a substance, improve accuracy, and introduce a higher library of substances to test for. The application contains 1,200 substances in its library and is claimed to be able to screen for hundreds of possible drugs in less than 20 minutes. As drugs and chemicals are constantly being created, improved, and derived from each other, a constantly improving library of what is tested must also constantly expand.

The testing itself also promises to be much more improved than previous methods. It requires less preparation, a smaller sample, and is much more sensitive than older methods. Consequently, it is much more cost effective and able to identify chemicals at lower concentrations in smaller samples than before. Using it, evidence can be found that would have gone unnoticed in earlier times. It is also automated, testing for substances automatically and identifying them using simple flow techniques.

What I find most interesting about the article is that it demonstrates the direction new technology is moving in. The process is primarily automated, automatically using chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze the sample and automatically identifying the substances from a database of thousands of chemicals. This mirrors the increasing number of technologies that are becoming automated: automated DNA sequencing, drug dosing calculations, and even some online illness diagnostic tools. It also demonstrates the increasingly growing role of the computer in biotechnology. The power of the microprocessor gives scientists and forensic toxicologists capabilities and tools that would be unheard of in past times. Here’s hoping to the continued improvement of technology and thus crime investigation.