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Updated: Aug 3, 2025

High-throughput and Comprehensive Drug Surveillance Using Multisegment Injection-Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry
Published on: April 23, 2019
Screening strategy for ketamine-based new psychoactive substances using fragmentation characteristics from high
Jianhong Gao1, Boyang Xu1, Rongji Yang2
1Key Laboratory of Drug Monitoring and Control of Zhejiang Province, National Anti-Drug Laboratory Zhejiang Regional Center, 555th, Binwen Road, Binjiang District, Hangzhou 310051, China.
Abstract:
Recreational designer drugs called new psychoactive substances (NPS) are emerging and pose enormous risks to public health. Detection of recently discovered or unreported NPS remains a huge challenge by using traditional targeted mass spectrometry methods. Here a novel screening strategy was developed to detect both known and novel analogs of NPS based on fragmentation characteristics from liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). The HRMS fragmentation pathway of one selected NPS family was investigated to form a database containing predicted drugs as well as their mass characteristics. During the study, an unexpected substituent effect was found to distinguish geometric isomers. Seventy-eight seized samples were analyzed using this strategy, four ketamine-based NPS were detected and three of them were newly marketed. The substituent effect predicted the position of their phenylic substituent, the results were confirmed by NMR.
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