The use of illicit drugs causes unquestionable societal and economic damage. To implement actions aimed at combating drug abuse, it is necessary to assess illicit drug consumption patterns. The purpose of this paper was to develop, optimize, validate and apply a procedure for determining new psychoactive substances (NPSs) and classic drugs of abuse and their main metabolites in wastewater samples by using solid phase extraction (SPE) and high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). Moreover, detailed validation of the procedure was conducted. The developed SPE-HPLC-MS/MS procedure (within the sewage-based epidemiology strategy) allowed for the simultaneous, selective, very sensitive, accurate (recoveries ≥ 80.1%) and precise (CV ≤ 8.1%) determination of new and classic psychoactive substances in wastewater samples. This study is characterized by new scientific elements, especially in terms of the freeze-thaw and post-preparative stability of the selected psychoactive substances. This is the first time that NPSs (mephedrone and ketamine), the main metabolites of heroin (6-acetylmorphine, 6-AM) and marijuana (11-nor-9-carboxy-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol, THC-COOH) have been detected and monitored in Poland. This study is also the first to corroborate the data available from the EMCDDA and EUROPOL report and indicates that the retail market for cocaine is expanding in Eastern Europe. Drug abuse and illicit drug trafficking is a global phenomenon that causes a broad spectrum of social, health and economic problems 1-4. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) and the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported that drug-related problems are becoming increasingly complex, especially with regard to the extremely dynamic nature of the new psychoactive substances market, stimulants, misused medicines and problematic cannabis use 3-7. Moreover, the verification of the presence of traditional illegal drugs (i.e., amphetamine, methamphetamine, ecstasy, etc.) in sewage samples is still needed because of environmental and forensic issues 8,9. The environmental impact of synthetic drug production has been highlighted in the last EMCDDA and EUROPOL report 7. Waste from drug production discharged into surface waters may harm aquatic life, can potentially contaminate the meat of cattle, which can affect the human food chain, and could further spread hazardous substances into the soil and waterways 7,10. In this context, it is crucial to pay greater attention to developing new methodologies as tools for monitoring illicit drug consumption and its trends and drug trafficking to combat drug abuse and improve quality of life 11-17. Illegal drug use is mostly an unofficial activity. Consequently, traditional survey methods, such as general population interviews and surveys, can be inaccurate and may also produce results based on conjectures 2,8,18,19. Conventional survey methods are not suitable for monitoring fast-changing drug markets over time 20. T...

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BackgroundDue to high mortality and lack of efficient screening, new tools for ovarian cancer (OC) diagnosis are urgently needed. To broaden the knowledge on the pathological processes that occur during ovarian cancer tumorigenesis, protein-peptide profiling was proposed.MethodsSerum proteomic patterns in samples from OC patients were obtained using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF). Eighty nine serum samples (44 ovarian cancer and 45 healthy controls) were pretreated using solid-phase extraction method. Next, a classification model with the most discriminative factors was identified using chemometric algorithms. Finally, the results were verified by external validation on an independent test set of samples.ResultsMain outcome of this study was an identification of potential OC biomarkers by applying liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. Application of this novel strategy enabled the identification of four potential OC serum biomarkers (complement C3, kininogen-1, inter-alpha-trypsin inhibitor heavy chain H4, and transthyretin). The role of these proteins was discussed in relation to OC pathomechanism.ConclusionsThe study results may contribute to the development of clinically useful multi-component diagnostic tools in OC. In addition, identifying a novel panel of discriminative proteins could provide a new insight into complex signaling and functional networks associated with this multifactorial disease.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12885-017-3467-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The aim of this study was to quantitate 42 serum-free amino acids, propose the biochemical explanation of their role in tumor development, and identify new ovarian cancer (OC) biomarkers for potential use in OC screening. The additional value of this work is the schematic presentation of the interrelationship between metabolites which were identified as significant for OC development and progression. The liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry technique using highly-selective multiple reaction monitoring mode and labeled internal standards for each analyzed compound was applied. Performed statistical analyses showed that amino acids are potentially useful as OC biomarkers, especially as variables in multi-marker models. For the distinguishing metabolites the following metabolic pathways involved in cancer growth and development were proposed: histidine metabolism; tryptophan metabolism; arginine biosynthesis; arginine and proline metabolism; and alanine, aspartate and glutamine metabolism. The presented research identifies histidine and citrulline as potential new OC biomarkers. Furthermore, it provides evidence that amino acids are involved in metabolic pathways related to tumor growth and play an important role in cancerogenesis.