Product Support Bulletin 118
Determination of the metabolic fate of drugs is an essential and important part of the
drug development process. In vitro biotransformation studies are commonly performed in the early drug discovery to determine metabolic pathways and to generate Phase I and Phase II metabolites for further characterization. In Phase I reactions, the parent compounds undergo hydrolysis, oxidation and reduction. Phase II reactions involve glucuronidation, sulfation, methylation, acetylation, glutathione and amino acid conjugation. Each of these transformations shows a characteristic mass shift with respect to the molecular ion of the parent compound as listed in Table 1. The wide variety of potential metabolites and resulting complex mixtures make their identification a challenging and labor-intensive task. The Data Dependent™constant neutral loss (DDCNL) scan function, available on all Thermo Scientific ion trap mass spectrometers, significantly expedites identification of these metabolites.
Thermo Fisher Scientific
United States
