Microfluidics is a vibrant and expanding field that has the potential for solving many analytical challenges. Microfluidics shows promise to provide rapid, inexpensive, efficient, and portable diagnostic solutions that can be used in resource-limited settings. Microfluidic devices have gained immense interest as diagnostic tools for various diseases through biomarker analysis. My dissertation work focuses on developing electrokinetically operated integrated microfluidic devices for the analysis of biomarkers indicative of preterm birth risk. Preterm birth (PTB), a birth prior to 37 weeks of gestation, is the most common complication of pregnancy and the leading cause of neonatal deaths and newborn illnesses. In this dissertation, I have designed, fabricated and developed several microfluidic devices that integrate various sample preparation processes like immunoaffinity extraction, preconcentration, fluorescent labeling, and electrophoretic separation of biomarkers indicative of PTB risk. I developed microchip electrophoresis devices for separation of selected PTB biomarkers. I further optimized multiple reversed-phase porous polymer monoliths UV-polymerized in microfluidic device channels for selective retention and elution of fluorescent dyes and PTB biomarkers to facilitate on-chip labeling. Successful on-chip fluorescent labeling of multiple PTB biomarkers was reported using these microfluidic devices. These devices were further developed using a pH-mediated approach for solid-phase extraction, resulting in a ~50 fold enrichment of a PTB biomarker. Additionally, this approach was integrated with microchip electrophoresis to develop a combined enrichment and separation device that yielded 15-fold preconcentration for a PTB peptide. I also developed an immunoaffinity extraction device for analyzing PTB biomarkers directly from a human serum matrix. A glycidyl methacrylate monolith was characterized within microfluidic channels for immobilization of antibodies to PTB biomarkers. Antibody immobilization and captured analyte elution protocols were optimized for these monoliths, and two PTB biomarker proteins were successfully extracted using these devices. This approach was also integrated with microchip electrophoresis for combined extraction and separation of two PTB biomarkers in spiked human serum in <30 min. In the future, these optimized microfluidic components can be integrated into a single platform for automated immunoaffinity extraction, preconcentration, fluorescent labeling, and separation of PTB biomarkers. This integrated microfluidic platform could significantly improve human health by providing early diagnosis of PTBs.

This report mainly discusses the development of the cysteine based PNA (CPNA), which is an analogue of PNAs. Peptide nucleic acids (PNA), a pseudopeptide DNA mimic, was discovered by Nielsen and his coworker in 1991. PNA is proved to sequence-specifically form a very stable duplex with complementary DNA and RNA strands through Watson-Crick base paring, and it is also capable of binding to duplex DNA by helix invasion. These intriguing properties of PNA implicated great potential for medical and biotechnical applications. Therefore, PNA has attracted many scientists in the fields of chemistry, biology, medicine including drug discovery and genetic diagnostics, molecular recognition. Due to its acyclic, achiral and neutral nature of the backbone, PNA has shown problems such as its poor aqueous solubility, poor cell permeability and instability of PNA-DNA duplexes and triplexes. Accordingly, many synthetic approaches have been directed toward developing modified backbones of PNA. Among those PNA analogs, only few examples including lysine-based monomers, guanidine-based peptide nucleic acids (GPNA) and the aminoethylprolyl PNA (aep-PNA) showed noticeable enhancements with regards to the daunting challenges mentioned above. Reported herein is the summary of our research endeavor to develop the CPNA oligomers with the great water-solubility and cell permeability. Chapter one briefly summarizs the background and history of the PNA as the front-runner of the antisense therapeutic agents. Chapter two discusses the novel protocols that enabled synthesis of the various versions of CPNA monomers for both Fmoc and Boc solid phase synthesis strategies. Chapter three includes the experimental procedures for solution phase preparation of the CPNA monomers. Chapter four starts with the introduction of solid phase synthesis strategy. After the brief review, our efforts on solid phase based synthesis of CPNA oligomers are discussed. Detailed procedures for the solid phase synthesis are summarized in Chapter five. Disclosed In the final chapter is a methodology which enables regioselective mono-acylation of hydrazines. Remarkably, this new protocol gives the mono-acylation on the less-reactive nitrogens of the hydrazines. Carbon disulfide takes the key role for this unique transformation. At the end of the dissertaion, selected NMR and Mass spectra are attached.

Zeólitas e carvão ativado são materiais eficazes para o tratamento de efluentes devido a sua grande área superficial e possibilidades de funcionalização, que permitem o desenvolvimento de novos materiais derivados visando a processos de concentração/remoção de contaminantes, por exemplo, em águas. A preparação de nanocompósitos magnéticos e sua aplicação na remoção seletiva de poluentes em meio aquoso tornou-se viável devido as interações distintas que ocorrem entre zeólita e carvão ativado com compostos orgânicos, íons metálicos e compostos nitrogenados. Assim, novos materiais voltados para sistemas de tratamento de águas residuais e monitoramento ambiental foram desenvolvidos com base em materiais bem estabelecidos. Os nanocompósitos foram caracterizados estrutural e morfologicamente por técnicas de microscopia eletrônica de varredura, termogravimetria, espectroscopia no infravermelho, espalhamento de luz, difração de raios x, bem como suas capacidades de adsorção. Foi avaliado também a viabilidade de aplicações em métodos analíticos, como pré-concentração por extração em fase sólida magnética (M-SPE), e, para tratamento de efluentes em amostras reais. Contaminação por cromo (VI), outras espécies potencialmente tóxicas e amônio foram removidos de águas residuais, gerando produtos tratados com níveis de contaminantes suficientemente baixos para atenderem as recomendações da EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) e CONAMA (Conselho Nacional do Meio Ambiente), permitindo seu descarte na natureza. Os materiais demonstraram ser adequados para pré-concentração rápida, eficiente, economicamente competitiva e ambientalmente amigável de amostras por M-SPE para quantificação analítica de espécies orgânicas ou inorgânicas, por técnicas analíticas convencionais. Assim, foi demonstrado a possibilidade de determinação simultânea de elementos potencialmente tóxicos e de outros cátions metálicos em concentrações traço (ppb), diretamente no material compósito magnético, por espectroscopia de fluorescência de raios X de energia dispersiva (EDX), além da quantificação de traços de compostos orgânicos semi-voláteis por cromatografia emfase gasosa com detector por espectrometria de massas, aumentando a sensibilidade para além do limite nominal de detecção por essas técnicas. / Zeolites and activated carbon are effective materials for the treatment of effluents due to their large surface area and functionalisation possibilities, which allow the development of new derived materials aiming at the concentration/removal of contaminants from water, for example. The preparation of magnetic nanocomposites and their application in the selective removal of pollutants in aqueous media has become feasible due to the distinct interactions that occur between zeolite and activated carbon with organic compounds, metal ions and nitrogen compounds. Thus, new materials for wastewater treatment and environmental monitoring systems were developed based on well-established materials. The nanocomposites were structural and morphologically characterized by scanning electron microscopy, thermogravimetry, infrared spectroscopy, light scattering, x-ray diffraction, as well as their adsorption capacities, viability of applications in analytical methods such as preconcentration by extraction in magnetic solid phase, M-SPE, were evaluated, and the composite materials Cmag and Zmag applied for treatment of real samples. Chromium (VI) contamination, heavy metal cations and ammonium were removed from wastewater, generating treated products with levels of contaminants low enough to meet the EPA and CONAMA recommendations, allowing their disposal in the wild. The materials have been shown to be suitable for rapid, efficient, economically competitive and environmentally friendly preconcentration of samples per M-SPE for analytical quantification of organic or inorganic species by conventional analytical techniques. Thus, it was demonstrated the possibility of simultaneous analysis of heavy metals and other metal cations in trace concentrations (ppb), directly in the magnetic composite material, by dispersive energy X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (EDX), in addition to the quantification of traces of volatile organic compounds (VOC) by gas chromatography with mass spectrometry detector, increasing the sensitivity beyond the nominal limit of detection by these techniques.

<p>Glycoconjugates are biologically important molecules with diverse functions. They consist of carbohydrates of varying size and complexity, attached to a non-sugar moiety as a lipid or a protein. Glycoconjugate structures are often very complex and their intricate biosynthetic pathways makes overexpression difficult. This renders the isolation of pure, structurally defined compounds from natural sources cumbersome. Therefore, to better address questions in glycobiology, synthetic glycoconjugates are an appealing alternative. In addition, synthetic methods allow for the preparation of non-natural glycoconjugates that can enhance the understanding of the influence of structural features on the biological responses.</p><p>In this thesis, synthetic methods for the preparation of glycoconjugates, especially glycolipid analogues, have been developed. These methods make use of solid-phase chemistry and are amenable to library synthesis of series of similar compounds. Solid-phase synthesis is a technique where the starting material of the reaction is attached to small plastic beads through a linker. This allows large excess of reagents to speed up the reactions and the sometimes difficult purifications of intermediate products are reduced to simple washings of the beads.</p><p>One problem with solid-phase synthesis is the difficulties to monitor the reactions and characterize the intermediate products. Gel-phase 19 F-NMR spectroscopy, using fluorinated linkers and protecting groups, is an excellent tool to overcome this problem and to monitor solid-phase synthesis of e.g. glycoconjugates. Two novel fluorinated linkers for the attachment of carboxylic acids have been developed and are presented in the thesis. These linkers can be cleaved with both acids of varying strengths and nucleophiles like hydroxide ions, and they are stable to glycosylation conditions. In addition, a novel filter reactor for solid-phase synthesis was designed. The reactor fits into an ordinary NMR spectrometer to facilitate the reaction monitoring with gel-phase 19 F-NMR spectroscopy.</p><p>The biological applications of the synthesized glycolipids were demonstrated in two different settings. The CD1d restricted binding of glycolipids carrying the monosaccharide α-GalNAc as carbohydrate could be detected on viable cells of mouse origin. CD1d is one of several antigen presenting molecules (the CD1 proteins) that presents lipids and glycolipids to circulating T-cells that in turn can initiate an immune response. The CD1 molecules are relatively sparsely investigated, and the method to measure glycolipid binding on viable cells, as described in the thesis, has the possibility to greatly enhance the knowledge of the structural requirements for CD1-binding.</p><p>Serine-based neoglycolipids with terminal carboxylic acids were used to prepare glycoconjugate arrays with covalent bonds to secondary amines on microtiter plates. Carbohydrate arrays have great possibilities to simplify the study of interactions between carbohydrates and e.g. proteins and microbes. The usefulness of the glycolipid arrays constructed in the thesis was illustrated with two lectins, RCA120 from Ricinus communis and BS-1 from Bandeiraea simplicifolia. Both lectins bound to the array of neoglycolipids in agreement with their respective specificity for galactosides.</p><p>Glycobiology is a large area of great interest and the methods described in this thesis can be used to answer a variety of glycoconjugaterelated biological questions.</p>

The three major biopolymers, proteins, nucleic acids and glycoconjugates are mainly responsible for the information transfer, which is a fundamental process of life. The biological importance of proteins and nucleic acids are well explored and oligosaccharides in the form of glycoconjugates have gained importance recently. The β-(1→4) linked N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) moiety is a frequently occurring structural unit in various naturally and biologically important oligosaccharides and related conjugates. Chitin which is the most abundant polymer of GlcNAc is widely distributed in nature whereas the related polysaccharide chitosan (polymer of GlcN and GlcNAc) occurs in certain fungi. Chitooligosaccharides of mixed acetylation patterns are of interest for the determination of the substrate specificities and mechanism of chitinases. In this report, we describe the chemical synthesis of three chitotetraoses namely GlcNAc-GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcN, GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc-GlcN and GlcN-GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc. Benzyloxycarbonyl (Z) and p-nitrobenzyloxycarbonyl (PNZ) were used for the amino functionality due to their ability to form the β-linkage during the glycosylation reactions through neighboring group participation and the trichloroacetimidate approach was utilized for the donor. Monomeric, dimeric acceptors and donors have been prepared by utilizing the Z and PNZ groups and coupling between the appropriate donor and acceptors in the presence of Lewis acid yielded the protected tetrasaccharides. Finally cleavage of PNZ followed by reacetylation and the deblocking of other protecting groups afforded the N,N’-diacetyl chitotetraoses in good yield. Successful syntheses for the protected diacetyl chitotetraoses by solid phase synthesis have also been described. / Die drei wichtigsten Biopolymere sind Proteine, Nukleinsäuren und Glykokonjugate. Sie sind von fundamentaler Bedeutung für lebenswichtige Prozesse, wie z.B. den Informationstransfer. Die biologische Bedeutung von Proteinen und Nukleinsäuren ist eingehend erforscht, während Oligosaccharide in Form von Glykokonjugaten erst in neuerer Zeit an Bedeutung gewonnen haben. Die β-(1→4) verknüpfte N-Acetylglucosamin (GlcNAc) Einheit kommt häufig als in vielen natürlichen und biologisch wichtigen Oligosacchariden und ihren Konjugaten vor. Chitin, ein Polymer von GlcNAc, ist in der Natur weit verbreitet, während das verwandte Polysaccharid Chitosan (Polymer of GlcN und GlcNAc) in gewissen Pilzen auftritt. Chitooligosaccharide gemischter Acetylierungsmuster sind von Bedeutung für die Bestimmung von Substratwirkungen und für den Mechanismus von Chitinasen. In dieser Arbeit beschreiben wir die chemische Synthese von drei Chitotetraosen, nämlich GlcNAc-GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcN, GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc-GlcN and GlcN-GlcN-GlcNAc-GlcNAc. Benzyloxycarbonyl (Z) und p-Nitrobenzyloxycarbonyl (PNZ) wurden aufgrund ihrer Fähigkeit, die β-Verknüpfung während der Glykosylierung durch die Nachbargruppenbeteiligung zu steuern, als Aminoschutzgruppen verwendet. Zur Aktivierung der Donoren wurde die Trichloracetamidat Methode angewendet. Monomere und dimere Akzeptoren und Donoren wurden unter Verwendung von Z und PNZ Gruppen hergestellt. Die Kupplung von geeigneten Donoren und Akzeptoren in Gegenwart einer Lewis Säure ergaben die Tetrasaccharide. Schließlich ergab die Entschützung von PNZ, gefolgt von der Reacetylierung der Aminogruppe und Abspalten der übrigen Schutzgruppen die N,N’-Diacetylchitotetraosen in guten Ausbeuten. Weiterhin wird die erfolgreiche Synthese der geschützten Diacetylchitotetraosen durch Festphasensynthese beschrieben.

The thesis describes the development of new and improved methods for analyzing degradation markers from organophosphorus Chemical Warfare Agents (CWAs). Paper I and II describes an innovative and significantly improved method for the enrichment, derivatization (trimethysilylation) and GC-MS analysis of a broad range of organophosphorus CWAs degradation markers, namely the alkylphosphonic acids and a zwitterionic compound. That was achieved using solid phase disc extraction in combination with solid phase derivatization. The new method overcomes most limitations observed with existing techniques: it offers almost 100 % recoveries, requires no elution or evaporation steps, facilitates miniaturization of the solid sorbent and reagent, is compatible with in-vial derivatization, and minimizes the chromatographic background due to the use of a highly selective anion exchange sorbent disc. Paper III describes the development of new fluorinated diazomethane derivatization reagents and their evaluation for rapid and high sensitivity screening and identification of nerve agent degradation markers. The reagents are water-tolerant to some extent, which simplifies the derivatization step. The best reagent identified was 3,5-bis(trifluoromethyl)benzyl diazomethane, which outperformed the other reagent isomers tested and also the established commercial alternative, pentafluorobenzylbromide, allowing for the rapid (5 min) and direct derivatization of a 25 μL aqueous sample in acetonitrile. The spectra of the formed derivatives (high-energy collision induced fragmentation MS/MS) were used to construct a database (Paper IV) that proved to be superior in terms of match factor and probability compared to EI data gathered for trimethylsilyl derivatives. The study also focused on efforts towards achieving detailed structure information on the alkyl chains of the compounds in question using diagnostic ion interpretation. The final paper (paper V) describes the first rapid direct derivatization method for analyzing nerve agent metabolites in urine at trace levels. The method is based on the derivative from the paper III and the unambiguous identification was proven using a combination of low resolution and high resolution negative ion chemical ionization selected ion monitoring techniques. Novel results presented in these papers include: the first in-situ derivatization of alkylphosphonic acids on an SPE disc; the first direct derivatization of nerve agent markers in water and biomedical samples; the first high sensitivity GC-MS screening for these markers; and the first highly reproducible high-energy isomer specific CID MS/MS library. Overall, the results presented in this thesis represent significant contributions to the analysis of nerve agent degradation products.

There is a growing awareness of the risks of pollution in biological systems and one potential problem is the synthetic antioxidants, used for e.g. the stabilisation of polymeric materials. Natural antioxidants are an interesting alternative, if the high efficiency and thermal stability of the synthetic compounds can be reached. In the work described in this thesis, vitamin E (alfa-tocopherol) was studied as a natural antioxidant for the stabilisation of one of the major plastics, polyethylene (PE). The dependence of the surrounding environment for the efficiency of alfa-tocopherol in polyethylene (PE), throughout thermal aging, was characterised by sensitive techniques. Two techniques which have shown a high sensitivity in oxidation detection of polymers; chemiluminescence (CL) and gas chromatographic analysis, were compared with the commonly used methods, infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and thermal analysis. Three different additive systems were selected as active domains for -tocopherol in PE. Two of these contained carboxylic acid groups, poly (ethylene-co-acrylic acid) (EAA) and polyTRIM/PAA core-shell particles (Core), and the third, oat starch, had no such groups. The additives containing carboxylic groups improved the long-term efficiency of alfa-tocopherol in PE, according to carbonyl index measurements made by FT-IR, while the additive without carboxylic acid groups gave no improvement. The amount of carboxylic acids emitted from the materials after thermal aging, assessed by head-space solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) and gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS), also showed that EAA increased the antioxidant efficiency of alfa-tocopherol, whereas the Core system showed lower antioxidant efficiency. Reference systems containing the synthetic antioxidant Irganox 1076 and EAA or oat starch had the same performance as the materials stabilised with only the antioxidants. CL measurements in an inert atmosphere (TLI) have earlier been shown to give earlier oxidation detection than carbonyl index measurements in unstabilised PE. In this work, the TLI analysis and the carbonyl index measurements had the same sensitivity in the detection of oxidation in the stabilised materials. Assessment of low-molecular weight carboxylic acids in PE during the aging was made by gas chromatographic analysis together with solid-phase extraction. Propanoic acid showed the best correlation with the carbonyl index measurements, even if the carbonyl index showed earlier detection of oxidation. It was also found that TLI and CL in an oxidative atmosphere (CL-OIT) had the same sensitivity and were in accordance for all of the materials, with exception of the materials containing EAA and alfa-tocopherol or Irganox 1076. CL-OIT was also compared to the oxygen induction time determined by thermal analysis. / QC 20100921

Standard chemical DNA synthesis with isotope labels requires expensive reagents; moreover, a large excess of phosphoramadites (typically 50-100 fold) must be used. We developed a process where enzymatic cyclic solid phase synthesis of DNA allows for more economic reagent use. A DNA template was immobilized on an epoxy-activated solid support. This chemistry was chosen because the formed linkage is inert to high pH conditions. High efficiency of the covalent attachment was observed when the reaction was carried out in MgCl2/CAPS buffer. It was found that Mg2+ enables the reaction to be completed over a period of 14 h, compared to 72 h under standard conditions. DNA synthesis was carried in a cyclic fashion on a support bound DNA using Klenow fragment.

Solid phase microextraction (SPME), needle trap device (NTD), and membrane extraction with a sorbent interface (MESI) are solvent-free sample preparation techniques that were developed to perform the rapid routine analysis of organic compounds (VOCs) in various environmental matrices by integrating sampling, extraction, preconcentration and sample introduction procedures into one step. A portable ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) analyzer has some advantages, such as small size, light weight, operability under ambient pressure, air as carrier gas, and sensitivity, all of which make IMS suitable for on-site monitoring for low concentration of analytes. The aforementioned sampling and preconcentration techniques were coupled with a portable IMS analyzer, as well as a thermal desorption unit that can accommodate SPME, NTD and MESI, which was modified and combined with IMS for on-site monitoring of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from human breath and plant emissions. Experimental results demonstrated that low detection limits were achievable for gaseous analytes, (25 ng/L for acetone (SPME-IMS), 43 ng/mL (NTD-IMS) and 2.3 ng/mL (MESI-IMS) for α-pinene). These three analytical systems were applied for on-site rapid determination of acetone in human breath and α-pinene from plant emissions respectively. The salient features of these systems that make them suitable for on-site monitoring of volatile organic compounds in different sources are: small size, simple operation, fast and/or on-line sampling, rapid analysis.

The main objective of the emerging field of metabolomics is the analysis of all small molecule metabolites present in a particular living system in order to provide better understanding of dynamic processes occurring in living systems. This type of studies is of interest in various fields including systems biology, medicine and drug discovery. The main requirements for sample preparation methods used in global metabolomic studies are lack of selectivity, incorporation of a metabolism quenching step and good reproducibility. The efficiency of metabolism quenching and stability of analytes in selected biofluid or tissue dictate how accurately the analytical results represent true metabolome composition at the time of sampling. However, complete quenching of metabolism is not easily accomplished, so sample preparation can significantly affect metabolome's composition and the quality of acquired metabolomics data. In this research, the feasibility of the use of solid-phase microextraction (SPME) in direct extraction mode for global metabolomic studies of biological fluids based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) was investigated for the first time. Initial research presented in this thesis focused on resolving several outstanding issues regarding the use of SPME for the analysis of biological fluids. SPME was not simultaneously capable to provide high-sample throughput and high degree of automation when coupled to LC-MS. This was successfully addressed through the development and evaluation of a new robotic station based on a 96-well plate format and an array of 96 SPME fibres. The parallel format of extraction and desorption allowed increased sample throughput of >1000 samples/day which represents the highest throughput of any SPME technique to date. This exceeds sample throughput requirements for a typical metabolomics study whereby ~100 samples/day are processed. SPME can also be used for direct in vivo sampling of flowing blood of an animal without the need to isolate a defined sample volume. This format of SPME is particularly attractive for metabolomic studies as it decreases the overall number of steps and also eliminates the need for metabolism quenching step because only small molecular weight species are extracted by the device, whereas large biological macromolecules such as proteins are not extracted by the coating. In current work, in vivo SPME sampling was successfully applied for sampling of mice for the first time. The proposed sampling procedure was fully validated against traditional terminal and serial sampling approaches for a pharmacokinetic study of carbamazepine and its metabolite. Excellent agreement of pharmacokinetic parameters such as systemic clearance, steady-state volume of distribution and terminal half-life was found for all three methods, with no statistically significant differences (p>0.05). The performance of new prototype commercial SPME devices based on hypodermic needle was also evaluated within the context of the study. The availability of such single-use devices with excellent inter-fibre reproducibility (<10% RSD) presents an important step forward in order to gain wider acceptance of in vivo SPME sampling. Finally, existing SPME coatings were not suitable for the simultaneous direct extraction of both hydrophilic and hydrophobic species, which is one of the requirements for a successful global metabolomics study. To address this issue, a systematic study of 40 types of commercially available sorbents was carried out using a metabolite standard test mixture spanning a wide molecular weight (80-777 Da) and polarity range (log P range of -5 to 7.4). The best performance for balanced extraction of species of varying polarity was achieved by (i) mixed-mode coating containing octadecyl or octyl group and benzenesulfonic acid ion exchange group, (ii) polar-enhanced polystyrene-divinylbenzene polymeric coatings and (iii) phenylboronic acid coatings. The second aspect of the research focused on the evaluation of SPME for a global metabolomics study of human plasma using two complementary LC-MS methods developed on benchtop Orbitrap MS system: reverse-phase method using pentafluorophenyl LC stationary phase and HILIC method using underivatized silica stationary phase. The parameters influencing overall method sensitivity such as voltages, mass ranges and ion inject times into C-trap were optimized to ensure best instrument performance for global metabolomic studies. Orbitrap system provided a powerful platform for metabolomics because of its high resolution and mass accuracy, thus helping to distinguish between metabolites with same nominal mass. The acquisition speed of the instrument at the highest resolution setting was insufficient for use with ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC), so all methods were developed using conventional LC. However, overall metabolite coverage achieved in current study compared well or even exceeded metabolite coverage reported in literature on different LC-MS or UHPLC-MS platforms including time-of-flight, quadrupole time-of-flight and hybrid Orbitrap instruments. The performance of SPME was fully compared versus traditional methods for global metabolomics (plasma protein precipitation and ultrafiltration). The main findings of this systematic study show that SPME provides improved coverage of hydrophobic metabolites versus ultrafiltration and reduces ionization suppression effects observed with both plasma protein precipitation and ultrafiltration methods. Using SPME, <5% and <20% of peaks showed significant matrix effects in reverse phase and HILIC methods, respectively and the observed effects were mostly correlated to elution within retention time window of anticoagulant for the majority of metabolites showing this effect. This improves overall quality of collected metabolomics data and can also improve metabolite coverage. For example, the highest number of metabolite features (3320 features) was observed using SPME in combination with negative ESI reverse-phase LC method, while in positive ESI mode plasma protein precipitation with methanol/ethanol mixture provided the most comprehensive metabolite coverage (3245 features versus 1821 features observed for SPME). Method precision of SPME method was excellent as evaluated using median RSD (11-18% RSD) of all metabolites detected. A proof-of-concept in vivo SPME study was also performed on mice to study the effects of carbamazepine administration and shows that SPME can be used as successful sample preparation method for global metabolomic studies in combination with unsupervised statistical data analysis techniques. This study highlights important advantages of in vivo sampling approaches including the ability to capture short-lived and/or unstable metabolites, to achieve truer representation of the metabolome at the time of sampling than achievable by blood withdrawal methods and the ability to use smaller animal cohorts while obtaining highly-relevant data sets. The experimental results provide new and useful insight into the effects of different sample preparation methods on the collected metabolomics data, and establish both in vitro and in vivo SPME as a new tool for global LC-MS metabolomics analysis for the first time.