Assessing the matrix effects of hemolyzed samples in bioanalysis

Nicola Hughes obtained her PhD in 1992 in Biochemistry at the University of London, UK, where she studied the covalent binding of carcinogenic polyaromatic hydrocarbons to DNA in mouse tissues using the (32)P-postlabelling technique. She did her postdoctoral fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. She specialized in the development of phenotyping and genotyping methods to investigate the pharmacogenetic variations in the N-acetyl transferases in relation to bladder cancer susceptibility and exposure to aromatic amines. She has been at Biovail Contract Research since 1997, when she first joined the Bioanalytical Laboratory as a Senior Scientist in the Method Development Group and is currently the Director of the Bioanalytical Laboratory. Over the years, Nicola has been responsible for providing leadership in the development and application of novel and highly sensitive LC-MS/MS bioanalytical methods and has improved the method validation process at Biovail Contract Research. Nicola is a member of the American Society of Mass Spectrometry and American Society of Pharmaceutical Scientists. She has published more than 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals and presented more than 60 posters and oral presentations at scientific meetings.