Interfacing Complementary Separation Techniques with Mass Spectrometry Utilizing Electrophoresis, Nanoparticles, and Functionalized Magnetic Beads

Abstract: Capillary electrophoresis (CE) has during the last two decades become more robust and been able to separate neutral analytes without compromising the downstream detection. An interesting aspect in CE compared to more commonly used high-performance liquid chromatography is the orthogonal separation mechanism provided by CE. Compounds are separated based on charge and size with extremely high separation efficiencies. However, since mass spectrometry (MS) has become one of the most important analytical detectors and play a key role for pharmaceutical- and in clinical applications it is of major importance that the two techniques successfully can be combined without any compromises. Improvements in existing ion sources must be made in order to fully take advantage of the potential in capillary electrophoresis and mass spectrometry. One way is to miniaturize the ion source (paper I) in order to make it more compatible with the smaller liquid volumes and lower flow rates in CE. Despite these improvements challenges such as low sample concentrations, non-separated peaks, unspecific losses, and poor ionization still remain, and are addressed in this doctoral thesis.Separation of neutral analytes has previously been achieved with packed columns but with several disadvantages. Therefore, MS-compatible pseudostationary phases in the form of nanoparticles (paper II) are an interesting alternative with its minimized risk of clogging, reduced memory effects and better separation efficiencies. Particles or beads have also shown to be of importance when reducing the dynamic range in complex samples. By creating functionalized magnetic beads (paper III), complex samples such as human plasma can be fractionated in the manner that low molecular weight proteins are selectively enriched. Despite fractionation and enrichment of analytes of interest (paper IV) the ionization suppression could lead to biased sensitivity, increased baseline, retention variations and chromatographic distortion. Therefore the separation, as well as the ionization, is of major importance. For instance, in order to separate and detect monoclonal antibodies, which are an upcoming class of biotherapeutic drugs, the choice of capillary temperature and sheath liquid composition must be considered due to its major influence on charge state, peak intensity and memory effects (paper V).