Fully Automated Analysis of Vitamin D in Blood Serum Samples Using ITSP Solid Phase Extraction.

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John Mortimer is the Laboratory Manager of the Special Biochemistry Laboratory which is part of the UHL Pathology Clinical Business Unit, based at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

John's laboratory provides analytical and diagnostic services to the three hospital sites in Leicester, the community hospitals as well as Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and GPs in Leicestershire. The lab is fully CPA accredited and as well as performing routine clinical work, it also gets involved with clinical trials and forensic toxicology for coroners and the police.

In the summer of 2010, the laboratories workload for vitamin D measurements had risen to a point where the lab was losing the battle to keep pace with the samples submitted. The analysis is performed by LC-tandem MS, which is pretty quick, with a run time of around 6 minutes, however, each serum sample needs to undergo an extensive clean-up and as this had to be done on the bench, the workload was becoming unsustainable. A particular problem was the protein precipitation step, since this was a wholly manual task.

John commented:

I came across some examples of Anatune's work when I visited a local food laboratory, and I contacted them to see what they might be able to do to help us.

Anatune took on the challenge and with advice from John, developed a fully automated , on-line solution based upon a GERSTEL Multi Purpose Sampler (MPS). robotic sampler. Once a serum sample was loaded into the sample tray, the MPS 2 was able to add reagents and standards, mix and precipitate the proteins using its CF 100 robotic centrifuge, carry out an SPE clean-up using ITSP Micro Solid Phase Extraction and finally inject the cleaned-up extract into the LC-MS. No operator intervention was needed and each sample was treated exactly the same on a just-in time basis.

This presented us with a bit of a dilemma. Anatune had quickly come up with, what looked like a good fix for our problem, but it would be a while before we could procure the hardware we needed. Fortunately, Anatune were keen to see their solution tested on real samples and so, kindly, loaned us a system for beta testing.
We had the inevitable niggles that occur when you put any new technology into place, but there were no show-stoppers and Anatune were very responsive in sorting out the minor problems that we did have.

Within a few months, the laboratory had gained sufficient confidence in the new system, to put it into routine use and it now runs all of their samples.

Before, my staff were kept very busy doing lots of repetitive pipetting. Now, we can load the serum samples onto the machine and walk away, so I can use my staff much more efficiently. We are on top of our vitamin D workload now, although we continue to get more and more samples. Currently the lab works a 5 day week and we plan, as a next step, to run samples 7 days a week. I will only need staff to attend work for an hour each day over the weekend - to load up the instrument and leave it to do the rest.

Of Anatune, John remarked:

They are a very good company. They certainly got us out of a tight spot. They are a friendly lot and if we do have a problem they respond immediately.