Allie Miskulin

Topic

Non-targeted paper-spray mass spectrometry approaches for the detection of newly emerging substances for community based drug checking

Department of Chemistry

Date & location

• Tuesday, April 21, 2026
• 3:00 P.M.
• Elliott Building, Room 305

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

• Dr. Dennis Hore, Department of Chemistry, University of Victoria (Supervisor)
• Dr. Chris Gill, Department of Chemistry, UVic (Co-Supervisor)
• Dr. David Goodlett, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, UVic (Outside Member)

External Examiner

• Prof. Malcolm McLeod, Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University

Chair of Oral Examination

• Dr. Helena Petrosova, Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology, UVic

Abstract

A decade after the overdose crisis was declared in British Columbia, opioid related deaths continue to occur at an unprecedented rate. The volatile nature of the illicit drug supply significantly contributes to the crisis, as the emergence of new psychoactive substances creates unpredictable risks for people who use drugs. Drug checking as a harm reduction strategy has been implemented to mitigate the risks associated with illicit drug use by providing information about the chemical composition of drug samples. Beyond identifying the chemical makeup of individual samples, drug checking also offers insights into the composition of the drug supply as a whole. The revolving prevalence of a wide range of adulterants within the opioid supply requires drug checking methods to stay up to date in order to provide relevant harm reduction information. However, many adulterants are highly potent at low concentrations, and are therefore often present below the detection limits of commonly used drug checking instruments. To address challenges with trace detection, paper-spray mass spectrometry has been implemented for drug checking. However, current targeted approaches are unable to detect substances outside of those specifically included in the analysis method. Given the continuously evolving nature of the illicit drug supply, non-targeted methods are needed to keep up with the rapid changes in opioid sample compositions.

This thesis explores various approaches for non-targeted adulterant detection using paper-spray mass spectrometry. The developed methods balance the trade-off between rapid, on-site detection efforts and off-site methods that provide confirmatory results. Using a combination of both approaches, preliminary analysis methods are developed to select samples of interest for confirmatory testing, allowing for the creation of a streamlined pipeline for novel substance detection. A primary focus is placed on method development and data analysis for paper-spray mass spectrometry data collected on a triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer, as this instrument is more accessible for the on-site analysis of drug samples. These approaches include the development of a data analysis tool to detect benzodiazepines, a precursor-ion scan method for the differentiation of nitazene compounds, and a machine learning classifier to identify samples that contain an adulterant. Additionally, a high-resolution data-dependent acquisition method is developed for the rapid, off-site confirmatory analysis of drug samples. Notably, the methods described in this thesis primarily use samples and data obtained during routine analysis at a drug checking service, allowing for the direct application of the developed methods to illicit drug samples. This work demonstrates approaches for novel compound detection using rapid and accessible methods that can easily integrate into a point-of-care workflow.