How can I Automate the Precipitation of Red Blood Cells from Whole Blood?

Paul Roberts, our LC-MS Applications Chemist, has been busy adding to our portfolio of clinical laboratory applications.

Having successfully completed the project to fully automate the sample preparation and analysis of Vitamin D in blood serum, the next item on the menu was to do the same for the determination of Immunosuppressants in whole blood.

This presented an interesting challenge. We were told that to separate the red blood cells in whole blood, we would need to spin down the sample using a centrifuge at 10,000 rpm – well beyond the capability of our CF100 robotic centrifuge.

Ignoring the sage advice of people whole know a lot about these things than we do, Paul put some whole blood samples on the CF100 at 3,000 rpm and bingo – we got a perfectly decent separation.

So with this potentially major obstacle out of the way, the method development preceded rapidly to the point where we now have a complete working method for the preparation and analysis of Immuno suppressants in whole blood.

Watch this space for Paul’s forthcoming application note, that will give details of this method – including performance data…