A current perspective of supercharging reagents and peptide bioanalysis

The bioanalysis community has been using LC–MS-based approaches for quantifying small molecule drugs and biomarkers extracted from plasma for at least a couple of decades. During this time LC–MS/MS technology has improved significantly, especially the sensitivity of triple quadrupole instruments. Over the past decade, these instruments have become sufficiently sensitive to detect and quantify larger analytes like peptides and small proteins once they have been extracted from complex matrices. However, these analytes are significantly more challenging to work with than small molecules, and the achievable sensitivity using LC–MS/MS instrumentation is hindered by the same mechanism that enables these higher molecular...