Development of Sensitive and Selective Methods for Identification of Marine Toxins by Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry

Over many decades, marine toxins have been monitored by the mouse bioassay (MBA) for the food safety purpose in many countries. In place of MBA, liquid chromatography (LC) with mass spectrometry (MS) is expected to use for the analysis of the marine toxins, deemed superior to the MBA in the point of sensitivity and accuracy. Our purpose is establishment of the analytical conditions using Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry for three groups of marine toxins of which each structure and property is different. The target three groups of marine toxins are diarrhetic shellfish poisoning (DSP) toxins as okadaic acid (OA) and dinophysistoxins (DTX1 and DTX2) , ciguatera fish poisoning (CFP) as ciguatoxin 3C (CTX3C) , and globefish poisoning as tetrodotoxin (TTX). Since globefish poisoning, tetrodotoxin (TTX) have been reported to be detected from the bivalves in a certain sea area near New Zealand and European coast, it's argued internationally to add TTX to the shellfish poisoning toxin.