Development and validation of an open screening method for doping substances in urine by gas chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry

In anti-doping, a high number of classes of substances are prohibited and laboratories need to detect these at low urinary concentrations. Traditionally, testing is done using complimentary liquid chromatography mass spectrometry and gas chromatography mass spectrometry. High resolution mass spectrometric acquisition has some important advantages over triple quadrupole instruments (e.g., open screening due to full scan high resolution data acquisition with retrospectivity, compatibility with libraries and a straightforward and effortless addition and validation of new compounds in the future). Doping samples can be stored for 10 years and retrospective data analysis can be used to re-evaluate previously acquired data (e.g., searching for prohibited (designer) substances that were unknown at the initial moment of analysis). During the past decade, these advantages have led to the wide-scale transfer of liquid chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometry screening to liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry screening for doping control purposes. Up to now, for gas chromatography a similar switch to high resolution screening has not yet occurred, because so far no method has been developed that combines sufficient sensitivity with wide-scale drug detection. In this work, the current gas chromatography triple quadrupole mass spectrometry screening method for human doping control purposes was successfully converted into an equivalent and complete gas chromatography high resolution acquisition screening method. This new screening method on a gas chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer has been developed and validated. The method is compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency requirements and allows the detection of 294 target compounds (and 14 internal standards), including diuretics, stimulants, narcotics, beta-2-agonists, beta-blockers, hormone modulators, anabolic agents and the quantification of 14 endogenous steroids in a single fast run (14.1 min).