Book Description
"Clinical chemistry is a medical discipline whose aim is to diagnose and assess disease by analysis of biological specimens. Modem laboratories can perform several hundred different tests using many different methods developed over the last century. The classical, more traditional assays are typically labour-intensive, not multiplexed (only measure one analyte or disorder per assay), expensive, require a long turnaround time, and may not provide adequate sensitivity and specificity. Developments in mass spectrometry (MS) and related technologies over the last two decades have provided solutions for many if not all of these shortcomings. While MS based applications have not yet been widely implemented in clinical chemistry laboratories, current developments will encourage the replacement of traditional methods as well as the expansion of clinically diagnostic endpoints. Indeed, modem MS can be used to simultaneously analyze and quantitate multiple biomarkers in a single analysis. Currently, no other technique exists that can provide a comparable multiplexed analysis. In this thesis, current MS and related technologies were developed and applied to several important but distinct clinical chemistry applications. [...]" --