New Strategy for Easy, Sensitive and Selective Detection of THC-Carboxylic Acid Direct from Hair

A new, highly selective and sensitive scan function for quantification of 11-nor-9-carboxy-D-tetrahydrocanabinol (THC carboxylic acid) in hair is presented. Hair is a very complex matrix and high background and/or interferences around the expected retention time for THC carboxylic acid are observed in the main MRM traces. The ability to use fragments of second order, MS (MS/MS/MS), will show a significant increase in selectivity in comparison to classical MRM mode. The hardware selectivity of LC-MS in combination with the fast scan speeds and extraordinary sensitivity of the latest generation Linear Accelerator Trap enables a highly selective and sensitive LCMS/MS/MS experiment for quantification, LC-MRM, which is a new state-of-the-art strategy for quantitation.