Bruker BioSciences Corp. (BRKR)

[MSC290]

Max weighs in as new weapon against cheats

12-20-2009 - By BARRY LICHTER - Sunday Star Times - Sport Racing

Drug cheats beware – the racing laboratory has a new toy which will bust you in a millisecond.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/racing/3179545/Max-weighs-in-as-new-weapon-against-cheats

It sits in NZ Racing Laboratory Services' new building in West Auckland, just along the corridor from the solid phase extraction robots dubbed Mr Ed, Phar Lap, Desmond and Tornado which have been extracting illegal drugs from samples since the 1990s.

The German-made machine, which we'll nickname Max because it has such a daunting name – it's a Bruker MaXis liquid chromatography ultra high resolution quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometer – cost the New Zealand Racing Board the best part of $800,000.

And with its just completed installation, our racing laboratory becomes one of the most advanced in the world, its state-of-the-art tool one which should make unscrupulous trainers very, very afraid.

"I feel like I've got a Ferrari," enthuses racing chemist and analyst Rob Howitt, as he explains the vital statistics of Max.

"We were the first racing lab in the world to apply high resolution technology to drug screening. Now we can expand this methodology with a far superior instrument."

The predecessor to Max, called the TOF, was bought in 2006. It took the laboratory, under the direction of head Dr Geoff Beresford, more than a year to develop high resolution methods for horse racing, tackling problems like dirtier urine and the need for increased sensitivity.

"Many of the major racing labs will be switching to high resolution techniques," says Howitt. "This is the sort of technology that will eventually make some of our older instruments redundant."

Max will take over the crucial job of routine screening the 8000 samples taken annually from the country's racing population of thoroughbreds, standardbreds and greyhounds.

Standing proudly amid his predecessors, with his 2.5m flight tube protruding between concrete beams in the ceiling, Max is in reality allowing the analysts to stage their own races – between molecules. The time it takes the molecules to reach the finish line allows the lab to accurately identify them.

What Max actually does is charge the molecules, suck them through a vacuum system, and very accurately measure their mass based on the time it takes them to travel from the bottom of the flight tube to the top and back again.

"A lot of compounds have the same nominal mass but this machine allows us to distinguish them by a mass difference equivalent to a couple of electrons," says Howitt.
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Through a complex system of metal lenses, Max can measure compounds to an incredible accuracy of one one-thousandth of a mass unit, thanks to its ultra-high resolution.

For example, whereas conventional instruments would come up with a mass reading of 271, Max will spit out 271.0637, positively identifying, in one step, the compound as Nordazapam.

Previously, analysts had to smash the molecules apart and look at their fragmentation patterns, which often overlap, to distinguish them from the dozens of other compounds weighing around 271.

"We used to fingerprint them by smashing them up, now we just weigh them," says Howitt. "Instead of looking for different groups of drugs with different methods, we can now cover a vast array with one method, and look for a lot of things simultaneously."

But another real advantage of Max is it will allow more retrospective testing of samples when new designer drugs surface – a significant deterrent for potential drug cheats.

Because Max logs all readings and profiles samples, data can be reprocessed so analysts will be able to go straight to dodgy stored samples – meaning retesting of maybe 10 samples, rather than 2000.

Harness Racing New Zealand veterinary adviser Dr Andrew Grierson said the machine will be in full service for Christmas-New Year racing.

"The ability of the racing lab to detect things has been really souped up with this machine – it's incredibly sensitive and accurate."

Grierson said it would have no trouble picking up the drug at the centre of the latest fuss, Aminorex, a methamphetamine-like substance that metabolised from the sheep drench Levamisole.

As revealed in last week's Sunday Star-Times, HRNZ issued a warning to trainers to stop using the drench after nationwide intelligence that, instead of using it as a worming or immune system boost, cheats were using it as a go-fast.

"The methodology of testing for it had been difficult overseas, but this machine makes it easy.

"Nothing will get past it."