The establishment of the Medical Faculty at the JKU also led to increased interest in clinically relevant topics at the Institute for Analytical Chemistry. The main goals of current and future cooperations with the facilities of the "Kepler University Hospital" are the joint development of analytical techniques for use in medical research and clinical diagnostics.
Analytical methods for clinically relevant questions that were developed at the Institute for Analytical Chemistry include:
The use of drugs in human and veterinary medicine has increased continuously over the past few decades. A negative side effect of this development is the fact that pharmaceutically active ingredients (AI) have entered the aquatic system. Frequent sources of AI water pollution are incomplete absorption by the human body (this is how non-metabolized active ingredients are excreted), gels and lotions containing active ingredients (which are applied externally and washed off during personal hygiene) and, unfortunately, the improper disposal of pharmaceuticals. Although contaminated municipal wastewater is treated in sewage treatment plants, most of these substances cannot be completely removed by these plants. When contaminated water is used for irrigation in agriculture, plants come into direct contact with these AI. Plants can ingest and metabolize these substances, which can pose a potential consumer risk if edible plants are affected.
In this area, the focus of our research is on:
Plastic products are part of our daily life. To improve the quality of such products, the base polymers (polypropylene, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate, polycarbonate, polystyrene, ...) must be supplemented with additives. An important subgroup of these additives are stabilizers, which are used to achieve sufficient resistance of the polymer to environmental influences such as UV radiation, heat or oxidative atmosphere.
We develop analytical methods to characterize and determine these stabilizers for:
Extracts from natural substances can be very complex mixtures whereby with different compounds are found in the various parts of a plant (leaves, seeds, fruits, bark) at different concentration levels. In order to separate and detect these plant components, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in combination with high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) is required. The analytical methods for extraction, separation and HRMS detection of different plants have to be optimized depending on the polarity of the compounds to be examined and the complexity of the extracts.
These optimized analytical methods are used to: