Microbore-based vacuum jacketed liquid chromatography for fast, efficient and sustainable high throughput bioanalysis

•Optimized UHPLC-MS/MS for rapid drug/metabolite bioanalysis has been evaluated.•UHPLC-MS/MS methods were compared with analysis using vacuum jacked columns (VJC).•VJC-MS/MS-Based assays of 0.25 min were equivalent to a 2.0 min UHPLC-MS/MS analysis.•VJC-MS/MS on 1 mm i.d. microbore column was suitable for rapid analysis of biofluids.•VJC-MS/MS gave significant reductions in solvent use without compromising performance. Extra-column band broadening can significantly reduce the performance of rapid ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-MS-based methods (UHPLC-MS). However, as we show here, UHPLC-MS/MS methods on short 2.1 mm i.d. columns can be optimized to reduce band broadening by simple procedures such as dispensing with the solvent divert valves placed between the column and the MS source. Vacuum jacketed columns have previously been shown to provide superior performance to conventional UHPLC-MS/MS by reducing on and post column band broadening. Here we have compared the optimized “direct” UHPLC approach for the high throughput (HT) bioanalysis of drugs and metabolites in biofluids such as urine and blood plasma with vacuum jacketed chromatography (VJC), using columns of the same geometry and packed with the same stationary phases. This study demonstrates that the performance of VJC was still superior to the direct UHPLC-MS/MS methods for rapid “generic” bioanalysis using gradient times of 0.25 to 5 min. Further investigations using microbore VJC-MS/MS, with 1 mm i.d. columns, for bioanalysis of the same biofluid samples showed that this format offers great promise for HT “discovery” drug and metabolite analysis/profiling. In addition the reduction of solvent use, by up to 90 % for methods when using microbore columns, can significantly contribute to improved sustainability and reducing costs per analysis.