Introduction

This chapter presents the definition of bioanalysis and discusses the purpose of bioanalysis. The purpose of the chemical analysis is normally both to identify (identification) and to quantify (quantification) the pharmaceutical substance of interest in a given biological sample. Bioanalysis can be performed on raw blood samples (whole blood) or on blood samples from which the blood cells have been removed (serum or plasma). Alternatively, bioanalysis can be performed from urine or saliva as examples, depending on the purpose of the bioanalysis. Bioanalysis is performed both on human samples and on samples from animal experiments. Bioanalysis is conducted in the pharmaceutical industry, in contract laboratories associated with the pharmaceutical industry, in hospital laboratories, in forensic toxicology laboratories, and in doping control laboratories. Bioanalysis is highly challenging because most target pharmaceutical substances are present in blood, urine, and saliva samples at very low concentrations.