Use of liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry and multivariate statistical analysis shows promise for the detection of drug metabolites in biological fluids.

The process of metabolite identification is essential to the drug discovery and development process; this is usually achieved by liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) or a combination of liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Metabolite identification is, however, a time-consuming process requiring an experienced skilled scientist. Multivariate statistical analysis has been used in the field of metabonomics to elucidate differences in endogenous biological profiling due to a toxic effect or a disease state. In this paper we show how a combination of liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC/TOFMS) and multivariate statistical analysis can be used to detect drug metabolites in a biological fluid with no prior knowledge of the compound administered. Copyright 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.