New mass spectrometric approaches to structural analysis in mixtures

Structural analysis of minor components in mixtures is a vital requirement in the development of any pharmaceutical compound. Mass spectrometry is uni quely able to give this kind of information on the trace amounts of materia l present as minor impurities in a drug substance. In this study we show th at a combination of mass spectrometric analysers with different characteris tics is an even more powerful approach with a higher chance of establishing a potential structure. In particular the advent of analysers capable of ac curate mass measurement on small amounts of material has enabled structures to be proposed in situations where previously no real conclusions could be made. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.