Simultaneous determination of 12 illicit drugs in human plasma by the PRiME clover-shaped nano-titania functionalized covalent organic frameworks pass-through cleanup procedure followed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A rapid and sensitive method based on PRiME (process, robustness, improvements, matrix effects, ease of use) pass-through cleanup procedure and ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) for the simultaneous determination of 12 illicit drugs in human plasma was developed and validated. The clover-shaped nano-titania functionalized covalent organic frameworks (CSTF-COFs) has been evaluated in the PRiME pass-through cleanup procedure to remove blood phospholipids from plasma samples. Ion suppression effects can be dramatically reduced by CSTF-COFs based PRiME pass-through cleanup procedure. Under the optimal conditions, the results showed satisfactory recoveries between 85.8% and 109%. Acceptable precision and accuracy were also obtained with RSD values less than 15.0% and RE values below 13.3%. The limits of detections (LODs) of 12 illicit drugs were in the range of 0.018-0.360 µg/L. Furthermore, the PRiME CSTF-COFs cartridge could be conveniently regenerated and reused for 40-50 cycles. The proposed method was applied to real plasma samples from suspected drug abusers, which was proved to be reliable and robust for drug screening in clinical and forensic toxicology.