Establishment of a reference standard database for use in the qualitative and semi-quantitative analysis of pharmaceutical contact materials within an extractables survey by GC-MS.

The analysis of reference standards may be performed to enhance the qualitative and quantitative data generated by non-specific screening methods utilized in extractables studies performed on pharmaceutical contact materials. However, the establishment of a database containing relative response factor and retention index values obtained from these standards has not been published. In this study, the establishment of such a database for GC-MS, a methodology commonly included in extractables studies, on an intra-lab basis was investigated. A set of 154 organic compounds representing a diverse range of chemical functionalities and properties was analyzed at eight time points on four GC-MS instruments that represent the diversity of age and model at our laboratory. The results of this study have shown that any variance in relative response factor between instruments was not significant from a practical perspective as supported by the coefficient of variation values (n = 32), which were ≤15% and ≤10% for 75% and 45% of the compounds tested, respectively. Furthermore, the retention index of the compounds, as expressed by retention time and relative retention time, did not have more than a 2% coefficient of variation between instruments or columns in most cases. It was concluded that a database of these values could be established for future use in extractables studies on an intra-laboratory basis.