Fully Automated Analysis of Blood Samples

Martin Perkins

3rd July 2013


The analysis of blood samples by LC-MS can be fully automated

No longer do you have to process blood samples by hand

One of Anatune’s outstanding successes of the last few years has been our fully-automated LC-MS/MS solution for the analysis of various analytes in whole blood and blood serum samples.

We have solutions available for:

  • Vitamin D2 and D3
  • Vitamin D epimers
  • Methylmalonic acid
  • Immunosuppressants

All of these solutions run on the same hardware configuration and are designed to provide a very efficient and cost effective alternative to the way things have previously been done in clinical laboratories. This is important because the considerable benefits of LC-MS/MS have been seriously compromised by complex and labour intensive manual sample preparation.

Many analytical procedures that work with blood, follow the same general scheme:

  1. Addition of reagents and standards to the sample.
  2. Mixing.
  3. Precipitation of the proteins from the serum or precipitation of blood cells by centrifugation.
  4. Solid phase clean-up of the supernatent liquid.
  5. Injection into the LC-MS/MS

In almost every case, although certain parts of this process may be automated, it is still the case that inconvenient and disruptive manual intervention is needed and skilled staff are tied-up all day, facilitating the work-flow.

Our innovation, using the GERSTEL MultiPurpose Sampler coupled to the LC-MS/MS, is to provide true “load the samples and walk away” automation of the whole process cutting the amount of work involved by up to 95% and enabling busy labs to process samples overnight and at weekends.

Automation also eliminates much of the potential for human error.

While we have been focused on selling the benefits of our systems to clinical laboratories, we have also become aware that many laboratories in other sectors have to work with blood samples and that our automated solutions for the analysis of blood samples by LC-MS/MS can offer benefits to labs working in non-clinical sectors, such as food, beverages, nutrition and universities.

If you would like to analyse blood samples, without the problems and inconvenience associated with manual sample preparation, please contact us.

We can provide you a selection of detailed application notes covering the analysis of various analytes in blood and serum, with full automation of sample preparation. If you would like to receive this information on a memory stick, please email: enquiries@anatune.co.uk, or call 01223 279 210.