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Original Release Date: July 17, 2017

In this special release episode of the 2017 NIJ R&D Symposium, Just Science interviews Lindsay Glicksberg, a student from Sam Houston State University. This is an excerpt from the abstract submitted explaining the research discussed in this episode:

The ongoing proliferation of designer drugs present a variety of public health and safety concerns. Synthetic cathinones are capable of producing a variety of psychostimulant effects. According to the National Forensic Laboratory Information System (NFLIS), their use has escalated. Forensic laboratories must be able to identify these new drugs as part of antemortem and postmortem toxicology investigations. Due to limitations in immunoassay-based screening technologies, many forensic toxicology laboratories must rely on chromatographic-based screening approaches in order to detect these drugs in biological evidence. The detection of drugs is heavily dependent upon the stability of the drug in biological matrices, information that is relatively limited for synthetic cathinones. This research presents a validated method for the quantification of twenty- two synthetic cathinones in urine and blood using liquid chromatography/quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (LC/Q-TOF-MS). The validated method was used to systematically evaluate the stability of synthetic cathinones in blood and urine over a six-month period. Drug stability was assessed in terms of pH, temperature, matrix, concentration-dependence and chemical properties.

Abstract Title: Stability of Synthetic Cathinones in Biological Evidence
Award #: 2013-R2-CX-K006
Forensic Discipline: Toxicology
Authors: Lindsay Glicksberg, B.S.*, Sarah Kerrigan, Ph.D.