Drugs of abuse testing is, in some ways, an imperfect science. With new innovations developing within the industry almost annually, best-practices for drug testing have become muddled, varying sharply from lab to lab.
One of the most common effects of an inefficient drug testing process, lengthy incubation times can have a significant negative impact on results, reliability, and ROI.
Lengthy Incubations Can Put Results into Question
If the primary goal of drug testing is to report verifiable use of drugs of abuse, long incubation periods are working against that goal. Incubation time impacts all samples differently through factors like the makeup of urine, pH levels, and even temperature of the sample. The longer a sample incubates, the more its volume of testable
Efficiency Increases Laboratory Throughput
Longer-than-necessary incubation periods for drug test samples don’t just hamper the testing process itself, they hamstring the testing facility. Commercial laboratories, healthcare facilities, and research organizations all operate with a finite number of resources, most importantly: time. In the laboratory environment, lost time equates to higher labor costs, lower throughput, and in the end, a drain on the bottom line of high-throughput screening operations everywhere.
Long Incubations Are No Longer Necessary for Drug Testing
Labs around the world, pushed to the edge in terms of resources and ability, have finally begun to demand better drug testing solutions. Enter: IMCSzyme. Developed by the team at Integrated Micro-Chromatography Systems, LLC, IMCSzyme was designed to optimize the process of drug testing. A pure beta-Glucuronidase enzyme, IMCSzyme hydrolyzes multiple drug classes quickly and efficiently with virtually no incubation period.
In fewer than fifteen minutes, IMCS can achieve over 90% recovery hydrolysis for a variety of difficult-to-detect drugs including several commonly abused opiates. With no incubation at all, IMCSzyme achieves nearly 100% hydrolysis for drugs like amitriptyline and oxazepam; in less then 30 minutes, over 85% hydrolysis can be achieved for opiates like Morphine-3, Codeine, and Dihydrocodeine, marking a significant improvement over results garnered by other traditional beta-Glucuronidases.
Long incubation periods are not a necessary evil of drug testing. Shorter incubations produce better results, more repeatable outcomes, and reduce inefficiencies on the backend. The faster a sample can be tested and reported, the sooner drugs of abuse sufferers can begin to get help.
Would you like more information on the groundbreaking technical specifications of IMCSzyme? Reach out to the dedicated team at IMCS today to learn more about how IMCSzyme can improve your process right away.
