LC-MSMS 101 : Getting Started with Quantitative LC-MSMS in the Diagnostic Laboratory
Grace van der Gugten
Government of Alberta, Medical Examiner's Office
Grace was most recently the LC-MS/MS Assay Development Specialist in the clinical chemistry laboratory at St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, BC, Canada where she was passionate about making challenging assays work for a busy clinical mass spectrometry laboratory. Grace has a BSc in Chemistry from The King’s University College and has spent the past 17 years doing hands-on LC-MS/MS lab work in bioanalytical and clinical laboratories. She is passionate about mass spectrometry and that this technology is utilized to help patients. Grace has a strong interest in troubleshooting - especially when an answer is found - and loves to share her knowledge and experience through teaching and training.
Lorin Bachmann, PhD, DABCC
VCU Health System
Lorin Bachmann joined the VCU Department of Pathology in 2007. She currently serves as Co-Director of Clinical Chemistry, Co-Director of Point-of-Care Testing, Director of the New Kent Emergency Department Laboratory, Technical Advisor for the Operating Room Laboratory, Pathology Outreach and Clinical Trials, and Laboratory Director for multiple VCUHS outreach laboratories. Dr. Bachmann received her PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Virginia, followed by a fellowship in clinical chemistry and proteomics research at the University of Virginia. Dr. Bachmann is certified by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry.
Dr. Bachmann is active within the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), where she serves on the Board of Directors. She also serves as the Chair of the Chemistry and Toxicology Expert Panel for the Clinical Laboratory and Standards Institute (CLSI).
Dr. Bachmann’s research interests include evaluation and validation of new clinical laboratory assays, clinical laboratory analyzer design, development of mass spectrometry-based assays for the clinical laboratory and standardization of laboratory testing. She serves as the Chair of the National Kidney Disease Education Program (NKDEP)/International Federation of Clinical Chemistry Laboratory (IFCC) Joint Lab Working Group, whose goal is to accomplish standardization of urine albumin methods to enable utility of clinical decision thresholds.
Dr. Bachmann has received numerous awards for her contributions to professional societies, education and research. She serves as principal investigator for multiple industry-sponsored studies.
Deborah French, PhD, DABCC (CC, TC)
UCSF
Deborah French Ph.D., DABCC (CC, TC) is currently Assistant Director of Chemistry and Director of Mass Spectrometry at the University of California San Francisco Clinical Laboratories. Her work currently focuses on the development and validation of LC-MS/MS assays for small molecules, specifically therapeutic drug monitoring, steroid hormones and toxicology. Deborah received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland and then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. She subsequently completed a ComACC Clinical Chemistry postdoctoral fellowship under the direction of Dr Alan Wu at the University of California San Francisco and is now board certified in Clinical Chemistry and Toxicological Chemistry by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry.
Judy Stone, MT (ASCP), PhD, DABCC
UCSF
Judy Stone, MT (ASCP), PhD, DABCC has worked with LC-MS in diagnostic laboratories since 1999. Her clinical practice involved small molecule method development, instrument to instrument and instrument to LIS interfacing, LC-MS automation, monitoring quality of LC-MS methods in production and staff training for clinical LC-MSMS. She served as faculty chair for the 2009 AACC online certificate program “Using Mass Spectrometry in the Clinical Laboratory”, as a scientific committee member for the MSACL Practical Training track, and is editor-in-chief for the AACC Clinical Laboratory News quarterly feature series on Clinical LC-MS. She enjoys documenting and presenting esoteric as well as absurdly common LC-MS problems in creative ways in order to help trainees learn troubleshooting (and avoid repeating her mistakes).
Jacqueline Hubbard, PhD, DABCC
Three Rivers Diagnostics
Jacqueline Hubbard received her BS degree in Biochemistry from the University of Vermont. She then earned her MS and PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Riverside (UCR). Following a one year postdoc at UCR, Dr. Hubbard completed a Fellowship in Clinical Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego Health. She is board certified in Clinical Chemistry by the American Board of Clinical Chemistry. In 2019, she took a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and as the Assistant Director of Clinical Chemistry at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. There, she focused on developing and validating drugs of abuse assays and SARS-CoV-2 serology testing. In 2022, she became the Laboratory Director at Three Rivers Diagnostics, a reference laboratory in Pittsburgh, PA. Her research focus still includes mass spectrometry method development and toxicology test interpretation.
ON-LINE (Grace van der Gugten, Deborah French, Lorin Bachmann) & IN-PERSON (Judy Stone, Jacqueline Hubbard)
This virtual course will take place with the MSACL 2023 Monterey students who are onsite, except that you will have three online guides (Grace van der Gugten, Lorin Bachmann and Deborah French).
Pre-requisite : Interested in a detailed, practical introduction to clinical quantitative LCMS Overview
Is your laboratory under pressure to purchase an LC-tandem MS or is the ROI you wrote last year haunting you now? This short course is designed for attendees implementing quantitative LC-tandem MS for patient testing who have laboratory medicine experience but no mass spectrometry training - CLS bench analysts, supervisors, R&D scientists, and laboratory directors. Theoretical concepts necessary for a robust implementation of clinical mass spectrometry will be presented – but the emphasis is on practical recommendations for:
- LC-MS/MS system purchasing
- site preparation and installation
- defining preliminary MSMS and LC parameters for your first method
- selecting and optimizing sample preparation for your first method
- choosing internal standards, solvents, and water, making reagents and calibrators
- adjusting sample preparation, LC and MSMS parameters to achieve the desired assay performance
- establishing data analysis & review criteria and an interface to the LIS
- pre-validation stress testing and method validation
- preventative maintenance and troubleshooting
- maintaining quality in production
