TY - JOUR A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Dorgerloh, Ute A1 - Paulke, E. A1 - Mumme, J. A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Hydrothermal carbonization of biomass: Major organic components of the aqueous phase N2 - Process waters obtained from hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of wheat straw, a biogas digestate derived thereof, and four woody biomass feedstocks were quantified regarding the total organic carbon (TOC) and selected organic compounds. HTC runs revealed that TOC loads were largely unaffected by process severity or type of feedstock whereas the C2–C6 fatty acids, determined by GC, displayed clear effects of temperature and feedstock. HPLC demonstrated simultaneously the initial increase and subsequent consumption of cellulose-derived furfural and 5-hydroxymethylfurfural as well as the increase of the lignin-derived 2-methoxyphenol. 2-Methylbenzofuran, an example for a substance potentially harmful to aquatic biota, was observed in high concentration in the HTC liquor from wheat straw-based feedstocks. KW - Furfurals KW - Gas chromatography KW - Liquid chromatography KW - Phenols KW - Process water KW - Total organic carbon PY - 2014 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/ceat.201300401 SN - 0930-7516 SN - 1521-4125 VL - 37 IS - 3 SP - 511 EP - 518 PB - Wiley-VCH Verl. CY - Weinheim AN - OPUS4-30333 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schallschmidt, Kristin A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Jung, Christian A1 - Bremser, Wolfram A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Leschber, G. A1 - Frese, S. A1 - Walles, T. A1 - Neudecker, J. T1 - Comparison of volatile organic compounds from lung cancer patients and healthy controls—challenges and limitations of an observational study N2 - The design and operation of an observational study on the profiles of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the breath of 37 lung cancer patients and 23 healthy controls of similar age is outlined. The necessity to quantify each VOC considered as potential disease marker on basis of individual calibration is elaborated and the quality control measures required to maintain reproducibility in breath sampling and subsequent instrumental trace VOC analysis using SPME-GC-MS over a study period of 14 months are described. 24 VOC were quantified on basis of their previously suggested potential as cancer markers. The breath concentration levels of aromatic compounds was expectedly increased in smokers while lung cancer patients displayed significantly increased levels of oxygenated VOC such as aldehydes, 2-butanone and 1-butanol. Though sets of selected oxygenated VOC displayed sensitivities and specificities between 80 and 90% using linear discriminant analysis with leave-one-out cross validation the effective selectivity of the breath VOC approach with regard to cancer detection is clearly limited. Results were discussed against the background of the literature on volatile cancer marker investigations and the prospects to link increased VOC levels in patients’ breath with approaches to employ sniffer dogs. Experiences from this study and the literature suggest that the current state of breath VOC based discrimination between cancer patients and healthy controls is hardly improvable. Observational studies tend to observe significant differences mostly in levels of certain oxygenated VOC but without resolution required for practical application. Any step towards practicable exploitation of VOC profile differences for illness detection would have to solve current restrictions set by the low and variable VOC concentrations. Further challenges are the technical complexity of studies involving breath sampling and possibly the limited capability of current analytical procedures to detect instable marker candidates. KW - Breath KW - Volatile organic compounds KW - Marker KW - Cancer KW - Gas chromatography KW - Solid phase microextraction KW - Volatilome PY - 2016 DO - https://doi.org/10.1088/1752-7155/10/4/046007 SN - 1752-7155 SN - 1752-7163 VL - 10 IS - 4 SP - Article 046007, 1 EP - 17 PB - IOP Publishing AN - OPUS4-37801 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dorgerloh, Ute A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Volatile hydrocarbons in contaminated soil: Robustness of fractional quantification using headspace gas chromatography-mass-spectrometry N2 - Fuel contamination of soils display complex and variable hydrocarbon mixtures with different volatility and toxicity characteristics. A recently suggested headspace procedure for the structure-based quantification of volatile hydrocarbons is evaluated regarding repeatability, reproducibility, and practical robustness. Three aliphatic and three aromatic fractions covering the boiling range between 69 and 216°C were defined as summation parameters by their respective equivalent carbon number ranges. A standard mixture of 35 aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons was used for calibration on basis of selected mass fragments specific for the aliphatics and aromatics, respectively. Two standard soils were fortified with the standard mixture or different fuels, respectively, and submitted to the analytical procedure. Limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantification (LOQ) were for all fractions lower than 0.1 and 0.3 mg/kg, respectively. Analyte recovery was linear up to between 20 and 110 mg hydrocarbons/kg soil depending on the fraction. Hydrocarbon recovery ranged between 80% and 110% depending on the fraction and the repeatability was typically better than 10%. Finally, the impact of extraction solvent variation, column solid-phase polarity, and alternative summation of fractions were investigated. The procedure was applied to liner samples taken from a site contaminated with aviation fuel and its practicability is discussed. KW - Gasoline KW - Contaminated site KW - Equivalent carbon number KW - Fuel KW - Static headspace PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/15320383.2018.1418287 SN - 1532-0383 SN - 1549-7887 VL - 27 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Taylor & Francis AN - OPUS4-43889 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fischer-Tenhagen, C. A1 - Johnen, D. A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Becker, Roland T1 - A Proof of Concept: Are Detection Dogs a Useful Tool to Verify Potential Biomarkers for Lung Cancer? N2 - Early and reliable diagnostic test is essential for effective therapy of lung cancer. Volatile organic compounds that are characteristic for cancer could serve as valuable biomarkers in cancer diagnosis. Both trace analytical and detection dog approaches give some evidence for the existence of such biomarkers. In this proof of concept, study dogs and trace analysis were implemented in combination to gain more information concerning cancer biomarkers. Two dogs were trained to distinguish between absorbed breath samples of lung cancer patients and healthy persons and succeeded with correct identification of patients with 9/9 and 8/9 and correct negative indications from of 8/10 and 4/10 samples from healthy individuals. A recent observational study found that breath samples from lung cancer patients showed an increase in 1-butanol, 2-butanone, 2-pentanone, and hexanal. Synthetic air samples were therefore fortified with these compounds and adsorbed to a fleece. Tested against breath samples from healthy probands, on presentation to the dogs these synthetic samples provoked an indication in three out of four samples. We were able to demonstrate that a combination of the natural nose of a dog and a trace analytic technique can be a valuable concept in the search for cancer biomarkers. KW - Lung cancer KW - Breath KW - Detection dog KW - Biomarkers KW - Sampling KW - Synthetic air PY - 2018 DO - https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00052 SN - 2297-1769 VL - 5 SP - Article 52,1 EP - 6 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne AN - OPUS4-44466 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - GEN A1 - Nehls, Irene A1 - Schallschmidt, Kristin A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Fischer-Tenhagen, C. A1 - Johnen, D. A1 - Leschber, G. A1 - Frese, S. A1 - Neudecker, J. A1 - Walles, T. ED - Schüler, C. ED - Püschel, K. T1 - BIOAIR - Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt zur Bestimmung von Krebsmarkern in der Atemluft N2 - Wie viele Forschergruppen, haben auch wir uns das langfristige Ziel gesetzt, einen Beitrag bei der Beantwortung der Frage zu leisten, was Hunde riechen, wenn sie Krebs erschnüffeln. Dabei sollen die Hunde nicht nur anzeigen, ob eine Atemluftprobe positiv oder negativ ist, sondern sie sollen auch aktiv eingebunden werden in den systematischen Suchprozess nach detektierbaren Biomarkern. So ist geplant, dass mittels eines präparativen Fraktionssammlers definierte Schnitte des Gaschromatogramms einzeln oder in möglichen Kombinationen auf das Adsorbervlies gebracht werden, um im Hundetraining eingesetzt zu werden. In analoger Weise könnte auch mit spezifischen Kandidatensubstanzen verfahren werden. PY - 2015 SN - 978-3-8300-8763-2 N1 - Serientitel: Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Institut für Rechtsmedizin der Universität Hamburg – Series title: Forschungsergebnisse aus dem Institut für Rechtsmedizin der Universität Hamburg VL - 30 SP - 93 EP - 101 PB - Dr. Kovac AN - OPUS4-33165 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ammann, Dominic A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Kohl, Anka A1 - Hänisch, Jessica A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Degradation of the ethyl glucuronide content in hair by hydrogen peroxide and a non-destructive assay for oxidative hair treatment using infra-red spectroscopy N2 - The assessment of quantification results of the alcohol abuse marker ethyl glucuronide (EtG) in hair in comparison to the cut-off values for the drinking behavior may be complicated by cosmetic hair bleaching. Thus, the impact of increasing exposure to hydrogen peroxide on the EtG content of hair was investigated. Simultaneously, the change of absorbance in the range of 1000–1100 cm-1 indicative for the oxidation of cystine was investigated non-destructively by attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) using pulverized portions of the respective hair samples. Hair samples treated with hydrogen peroxide consistently displayed a significantly increased absorbance at 1040 cm-1 associated with the formation of cysteic acid. The EtG content decreased significantly if the hair was treated with alkaline hydrogen peroxide as during cosmetic bleaching. It could be shown that ATR-FTIR is capable of detecting an exposure to hydrogen peroxide when still no brightening was visible and already before the EtG content deteriorated significantly. Thus, hair samples suspected of having been exposed to oxidative treatment may be checked non-destructively by a readily available technique. This assay is also possible retrospectively after EtG extraction and using archived samples. KW - Hair testing KW - Oxidation KW - Bleaching KW - Cysteic acid KW - HPLC–MS/MS PY - 2014 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forsciint.2014.07.029 SN - 0379-0738 SN - 1872-6283 VL - 244 SP - 30 EP - 35 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] AN - OPUS4-31755 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Evaluierung der Fähigkeit zur Geruchsgeneralisierung und Differenzierung von Hunden im Modellversuch T2 - Symposium Odorologie CY - Hamburg DA - 2015-03-23 PY - 2015 AN - OPUS4-32831 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - BIOAIR - Ein interdisziplinäres Projekt zur Bestimmung von Krebsmarkern in der Atemluft T2 - 2. Symposoium Odorologie CY - Hamburg DA - 2015-03-23 PY - 2015 AN - OPUS4-32907 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mönch, Bettina A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Determination of ethyl glucuronide in hair: a rapid sample pretreatment involving simultaneous milling and extraction N2 - A combination of simultaneous milling and extraction known as micropulverized extraction was developed for the quantification of the alcohol marker ethyl glucuronide (EtG) in hair samples using a homogeneous reference material and a mixer mill. Best extraction results from 50 mg of hair were obtained with 2-mL plastic tubes containing two steel balls (Ø = 5 mm), 0.5 mL of water and with an oscillating frequency of 30 s-1 over a period of 30 min. EtG was quantified employing a validated GC-MS procedure involving derivatization with pentafluoropropionic acid anhydride. This micropulverization procedure was compared with dry milling followed by separate aqueous extraction and with aqueous extraction after manual cutting to millimeter-size snippets. Micropulverization yielded 28.0±1.70 pg/mg and was seen to be superior to manually cutting (23.0±0.83 pg/mg) and equivalent to dry grinding (27.7±1.71 pg/mg) with regard to completeness of EtG extraction. The option to process up to 20 samples simultaneously makes micropulverization especially valuable for the high throughput of urgent samples. KW - Ethyl glucuronide KW - Hair KW - Micropulverized extraction KW - GC-MS PY - 2014 DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-013-0939-z SN - 0937-9827 SN - 1437-1596 VL - 128 IS - 1 SP - 69 EP - 72 PB - Springer CY - Berlin ; Heidelberg AN - OPUS4-30063 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Scharkoi, O. A1 - Becker, Roland A1 - Esslinger, Susanne A1 - Weber, M. A1 - Nehls, Irene T1 - Predicting sites of cytochrome P450-mediated hydroxylation applied to CYP3A4 and hexabromocyclododecane N2 - This article describes a simple and quick in silico method for the prediction of cytochrome P450 (CYP)-mediated hydroxylation of drug-like compounds. Testosterone and progesterone, two known substrates of CYP3A4, are used to test the method. Further, we apply the procedure to predict sites of hydroxylation of isomers of the flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane by CYP3A4. Within the method, the compound is rotated in the binding pocket of the cytochrome, so that each hydrogen under consideration is placed near the active centre. Afterwards, short molecular dynamics simulations are provided for each step of the rotation. All steps of the simulation are compared concerning the distances between the hydrogens and the active centre and the corresponding energies. The computational results correlate well with experimental results. KW - Predicting sites of metabolism KW - Cytochrome P450 KW - Hydroxylation KW - Metabolism of HBCD PY - 2015 DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/08927022.2014.898845 SN - 0892-7022 SN - 1029-0435 VL - 41 IS - 7 SP - 538 EP - 546 PB - Gordon and Breach CY - New York, NY AN - OPUS4-30492 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -