Automated Desorption, SPE Extraction, and LC-MS/MS Analysis of Dried Blood Spots

Martin Perkins

10th February 2016

The extraction of dried blood spots (DBS) typically involves manual intervention. First, a small disc is punched out of the centre of a dried blood spot placed on a DBS card. Following solvent extraction of the sample, it is also common to include further clean-up steps, using solid phase extraction (SPE) to improve detection limits or exchanging solvents for compatibility with subsequent chromatographic separations. Modern analytical labs are looking to automate the process to help reduce solvent usage and to increase sample throughput while ensuring the high quality of the resulting data.