Detection and identification of drug degradation impurities in drug products is important to the development of formulated drugs. Structures and formation mechanisms of degradation impurities need to be identified once the degradants exceed certain specified levels, as required for the regulatory guidelines. A rapid structure elucidation of those drug substance related impurities is essential to have a clear understanding of the quality of the new drug.
For this purpose, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) techniques are the most frequently used. However, the processing and rationalization of MS/MS data can be quite time consuming, especially in peptide studies due to their size and multiple charge.
