Simultaneous determination of 12 illicit drugs in human plasma by the PRiME clover-shaped nano-titania functionalized covalent organic frameworks pass-through cleanup procedure followed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

A rapid and sensitive method based on PRiME (process, robustness, improvements, matrix effects, ease of use) pass-through cleanup procedure and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) for the simultaneous determination of 12 illicit drugs in human plasma was developed and validated. The clover-shaped nano-titania functionalized covalent organic frameworks (CSTF-COFs) has been evaluated in the PRiME pass-through cleanup procedure to remove blood phospholipids from plasma samples. Ion suppression effects can be dramatically reduced by CSTF-COFs based PRiME pass-through cleanup procedure. Under the optimal conditions, the results showed satisfactory recoveries between 85.8% and 109%. Acceptable precision and accuracy were also obtained with RSD values less than 15.0% and RE values below 13.3%. The limits of detections (LODs) of 12 illicit drugs were in the range of 0.018–0.360 µg/L. Furthermore, the PRiME CSTF-COFs cartridge could be conveniently regenerated and reused for 40–50 cycles. The proposed method was applied to real plasma samples from suspected drug abusers, which was proved to be reliable and robust for drug screening in clinical and forensic toxicology.