Tomasz Baczek

• Medical University of Gdansk

Background: Isotretinoin is a highly effective treatment for moderate-to-severe acne, but strict contraceptive measures are required because of its teratogenicity. The European Pregnancy Prevention Programme (PPP) aims to minimise foetal exposure through structured protocols. However, real-world data on patient compliance and treatment outcomes are...

Several strategies, including UV detection with a diode array detector (DAD), laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), derivatization reactions, the use of micelles in the separation buffer, as well as online preconcentration techniques based on pressure-assisted electrokinetic injection (PAEKI), and offline preconcentration using solid-phase extraction (...

Background/Objectives: Inflammatory arthritides includes a range of joint disorders, such as osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as inflammatory conditions like gout and lupus. This review investigates the pathophysiology, therapeutic challenges, and evolving treatment landscape of arthritis, with a particular focus on the clinical rol...

Lung cancer is one of the most deadly types of cancer, worldwide. It is essential to diagnose lung cancer in the early stage to accelerate the therapeutic process. The progress in nanotechnology-assisted therapies has revolutionized early diagnosis of lung cancer by developing non-invasive, selective, and highly sensitive nanostructures. Nanopartic...

Evaluation of 12 commercially available products of Cannabis sativa L. was performed to find similarities and differences in their composition. The contents of metallic elements determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) made it possible to order microelements as follows: Fe > Mn > Zn > Cu. As for the contents of macroelements, the p...

Background/Objectives: Arthritis encompasses a range of joint-related conditions, including osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis, along with inflammatory diseases such as gout and lupus. This research study explores the underlying causes, challenges, and treatment options for arthritis, aiming to enhance the effectiveness of therapies. Methods:...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent organic pollutants that pose significant health risks, especially for neonates. Traditional urine analysis methods for PCBs are often complex and prone to contamination. This study introduces a novel, efficient, and contamination-free method for PCB analysis in neonatal urine using 3D-printed extracti...

Carbohydrate polymers, including Chitosan, Cellulose, Starch, Dextran, Pectin, Alginate, and Hyaluronic Acid, are well-known as stimuli-responsive biopolymers showing great potential for drug delivery vehicles. Depending on the specific design and fabrication, they can respond to changes in pH, temperature, or enzymatic activity when exposed. This...

This study aimed to develop and optimize an analytical method for profiling 21 amino acids in cerebrospinal fluid and plasma, addressing the need for improved diagnostic tools in leukemia research. Using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, the method achieved enhanced resolution, sensitivit...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths, worldwide. To date, various strategies have been developed and examined for treating lung cancer. The era of nanotechnology has opened a new avenue for designing advanced nanoparticulate systems for single or multiple delivery of chemotherapeutics. Despite the promising synergism between th...

Organ-on-a-chip (OoC) devices represent advanced in vitro models that enable mimicking the human tissue architecture function and physiology, offering a promising alternative to traditional animal testing methods. These devices combine the microfluidics with soft materials, specifically hydrogel membranes (HMs) for mimicking the extracellular matri...

The pathogenesis of depression is complex and heterogeneous, and the management of this disease remains unsatisfactory, so mechanisms and therapeutic strategies are constantly being sought. This study aimed to determine the potential role of estrogen metabolites in the pathogenesis of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) based on the determination...

Introduction This article describes the invention of graphene oxide (GO) or reduced graphene oxide (rGO) functionalised with 2-methoxy estradiol. The presence of polar hydroxyl groups enables the binding of 2-ME to GO/rGO through hydrogen bonds with epoxy and hydroxyl groups located on the surface and carbonyl and carboxyl groups located at the edg...

Interest in obstructive sleep apnea is rising due to its neurocognitive and cardiovascular impacts, including systemic hypertension, myocardial infarction, and cerebrovascular events. Obstructive sleep apnea diagnosis can be suggested through symptoms like snoring, daytime sleepiness, and physical signs like increased neck circumference; however, o...

The work demonstrates the viability of using hydrophobic natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) as extraction solvents in dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME). To this aim, a menthol-thymol mixture is employed to develop, for the first time, a hydrophobic NADES-based DLLME method for determining novel anticancer drug, pacritinib (PAC),...

The measurement of selected norepinephrine metabolites, such as 3,4-dihydroxyphenylglycol (DHPG), 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylethylenglycol (MHPG), and vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), in biological matrices—including urine—is of great clinical importance for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases. This fact has forced researchers to evaluate new analyt...

Research over the past years has compared the enantiomers (S)-ketamine (esketamine) and (R)-ketamine (arketamine) of the previously known racemic mixture called ketamine (R/S-ketamine). Esketamine has been found to be more potent, offering three times stronger analgesic effects and 1.5 times greater anesthetic efficacy than arketamine. It provides...

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a competitive analytical technique to widely used liquid chromatography. It is characterized by low consumption of reagents and organic solvents, as well as relatively short analysis time, which translates into low operating costs and environmental friendliness. Unfortunately, compared to liquid chromatography, the...

The discovery of epinephrine (adrenaline) and its subsequent implications in medicine owes significant contributions to Cybulski across different centuries, who, in 1894, was pivotal in identifying the adrenal medulla’s role in blood pressure regulation and naming the active substance “nadnerczyna”, known today as adrenaline. His work demonstrated...

Purpose Pressure cycling technology (PCT) coupled with data‐independent sequential window acquisition of all theoretical mass spectra (SWATH‐MS) can be a powerful tool for identifying and quantifying biomarkers (e.g., proteins) in complex biological samples. Mouse models are frequently used in brain studies, including those focusing on different ne...

Vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia, also known as VIN, is a non-invasive squamous lesion and precursor of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the vulva. There is no screening test for vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia. Diagnosis of VIN is made clinically and confirmed with a biopsy. We describe a 66-year-old woman with a condyloma-like tumour located in...

Vitamin A, an essential micronutrient, is integral to various biological processes crucial for organismal development and maintenance. Dietary sources of vitamin A encompass preformed retinol, retinyl esters, and provitamin A carotenoids. Retinoic acid (RA), a key component, plays pivotal roles in vision, cell proliferation, apoptosis, immune funct...

Graphene and graphene-based materials have attracted growing interest for potential applications in medicine because of their good biocompatibility, cargo capability and possible surface functionalizations. In parallel, prototypic graphene-based devices have been developed to diagnose, imaging and track tumor growth in cancer patients. There is a g...

Quantitative structure-retention relationship (QSRR) modeling has emerged as an efficient alternative to predict analyte retention times using molecular descriptors. However, most reported QSRR models are column-specific, requiring separate models for each high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system. This study evaluates the potential of m...

A rapid and effective method of nonionic micellar electrokinetic chromatography with laser-induced fluorescence detection and sweeping as an online preconcentration method was developed for the simultaneous determination of free essential amino acids in supplement formulations. The analytes were derivatized using fluorescein isothiocyanate isomer I...

Estrogens function in numerous physiological processes including controlling brain cell growth and differentiation. 2-Methoxestradiol (2-ME2), a 17β-estradiol (E2) metabolite, is known for its anticancer effects as observed both in vivo and in vitro. 2-ME2 affects all actively dividing cells, including neurons. The study aimed to determine whether...

We report on the first successful attempt to produce a silica/polymer composite with retained C18 silica sorptive properties that can be reliably printed using three-dimensional (3D) FDM printing. A 3D printer provides an exceptional tool for producing complex objects in an easy and inexpensive manner and satisfying the current custom demand of res...

A series of novel 2-alkythio-4-chloro-N-[imino-(heteroaryl)methyl]benzenesulfonamide derivatives, 8–24, were synthesized in the reaction of the N-(benzenesulfonyl)cyanamide potassium salts 1–7 with the appropriate mercaptoheterocycles. All the synthesized compounds were evaluated for their anticancer activity in HeLa, HCT-116 and MCF-7 cell lines....

The endocannabinoid system (ECS), particularly its signaling pathways and ligands, has garnered considerable interest in recent years. Along with clinical work investigating the ECS’ functions, including its role in the development of neurological and inflammatory conditions, much research has focused on developing analytical protocols enabling the...

In recent years, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) has been applied in docetaxel (DOC)-based anticancer therapy to precisely control various pharmacokinetic parameters, including the concentration of DOC in biofluids (e.g., plasma or urine), its clearance, and its area under the curve (AUC). The ability to determine these values and to monitor DOC...

Introduction The endocannabinoid system consists of different types of receptors, enzymes and endocannabinoids (ECs), which are involved in several physiological processes, but also play important role in the development and progression of central nervous system disorders. Objectives The purpose of this study was to apply precise and sensitive met...

Due to epirubicin’s (EPI) narrow therapeutic index and risk of cardiotoxicity, it is critical to monitor concentrations of this drug when being used to treat cancer patients. In this study, a simple and fast magnetic solid-phase microextraction (MSPME) protocol for the determination of EPI in plasma and urine samples is developed and tested. Experi...

In this paper we demonstrate the development of the extraction procedure of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons from baby diapers along with their quantification by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Apart from covering plastic foil, disposable baby diapers contain sorbents intended to absorb urine and feces. A hygroscopic, adsorptive, and tough-to...

In recent years, off-label use of sirolimus (SIR) has been gaining attention in the clinical practice. However, since it is critical to achieve and maintain therapeutic blood levels of SIR during treatment, the regular monitoring of this drug in individual patients must be implemented, especially in off-label indications of this drug. In this artic...

Ionic liquids (ILs), such as imidazoles, can be used to prevent the sorption of analytes onto the walls of the capillary. Prior works have confirmed that coating the capillary wall with a cationic layer can increase its surface stability, thereby improving the repeatability of the separation process. In this study, micellar electrokinetic chromatog...

The interaction of platelets with steroid hormones is poorly investigated. Age is one of the factors that increase the risk of pathological platelet reactivity and thrombosis. The aim of this study was to assess whether there were associations between platelet reactivity and plasma cortisol levels in volunteers aged 60–65 years. For this purpose, i...

This article presents a comparative study of selected deproteinization-, liquid–liquid-extraction- (LLE), and solid-phase-extraction (SPE)-based procedures for the isolation of doxorubicin (DOX) and daunorubicin (DAU) as an internal standard (IS) from rat tissue samples. During the experiments, all samples were analyzed via liquid chromatography co...

Ionic liquids (ILs), also known as "designer solvents," comprise a large group of compounds that can improve overall sample preparation performance due to their unique physical and chemical properties. Some of them have a comparable structure to surfactants, which can be also considered as effective extraction solvents. In this study, nine differen...

The potential role of testosterone and dihydrotestosterone in the pathogenesis of depression in older subjects is poorly recognized and understood. The current study examines the symptoms of depression in males and females at the age of 60–65 using a short version (15 questions) of the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) questionnaire. Blood plasma le...

Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, causing nearly one million deaths each year. Herein, we present the effect of 2-methoxyestradiol (2-ME), the endogenous metabolite of 17β-estradiol (E2), on non-small cell lung cancer cells (NSCLC). We observed that 2-ME reduced the viability of lung adenocarcinoma in two-dimensional (2D) and...

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common hematological malignancy affecting pediatric patients. ALL treatment regimens with cytostatics manifest substantial toxicity and have reached the maximum of well-tolerated doses. One potential approach for improving treatment efficiency could be supplementation of the current regimen with natura...

Significant advances in the pharmacological management of depression have been made since the introduction of the first-generation of antidepressants in the 1950s. Currently, treatment options for depression include pharmacotherapy with newer generations of drugs, such as atypical ADs. However, since ADs belong to a group of psychotropic drugs, som...

The use of ionic liquids (ILs) as mobile phase additives in reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RP-LC) can influence the dynamic coating of the stationary phases and even allow them to change their chromatographic properties. In this study, the interaction between thirteen different ILs added to 0.1% HCOOH (mobile phase) and the functional groups...

In recent years mental disorders, such as depression, have become an alarmingly frequent problem in modern society. Therefore, a need for novel anti-depressant agents is ever-growing. With low drug acceptance rate, industry is struggling to introduce new anti-depressant agents, and every single tool helping to change this state of things is of imme...

Background L-tryptophan is an essential amino acid, necessary for the human body to function. Its degradation occurs through two metabolic pathways. Approximately 95% of the L-tryptophan available in the body is converted via the kynurenine pathway, while the remainder is degraded via the serotonin pathway. Properly maintained balance between the c...

While developing Quantitative Structure-Retention Relationships (QSRR) models it is crucial to construct a data matrix, consisting of both experimentally designated values (the ones that are being modelled) and molecular descriptors, representing physicochemical properties in form of numbers. In order to designate those descriptors, studied compoun...

Mitotane is a cytotoxic drug used in the treatment of inoperable adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), it inhibits steroidogenesis as well, and therefore monitoring the level of steroid hormones in patients treated with mitotane is a crucial point of therapy. Hence, we have developed a simple, fast, and efficient electrophoretic method combined with swee...

Ionic liquids (ILs) such as imidazole can be used to prevent the sorption of analytes onto the quartz walls of the capillary. Coating the capillary wall with a cation layer increases its surface stability, consequently improving the repeatability of separation process. Currently, examining the effects of dynamic coatings on the capillary wall is an...

A high-performance version of in-line, three-phase direct immersion-single drop microextraction (DI-SDME) coupled with capillary electrophoresis (CE) was demonstrated using a commercial CE instrument, and all the major and minor details were described to provide an easy-to-follow and user-friendly protocol. The excellent sample cleanup and enrichme...

Naturally occurring molecules are excellent sources of lead compounds. A series of oleanolic acid (OA) derivatives previously synthesized in our laboratory, which show promising antitumor activity, have been analyzed in terms of lipophilicity evaluation applying chromatographic and computational approaches. Retention data obtained on three reversed...

IntroductionPsoriatic arthritis (PsA), an inflammatory arthritis that develops in individuals with psoriasis, is associated with reduced quality of life. Identifying biomarkers associated with development of PsA as well as with PsA disease activity may help management of psoriatic disease.Objectives To use metabolomic fingerprinting to determine po...

Immunosuppressive drugs have commonly been used to prevent transplant rejection, and recently, also in pharmacotherapy of patients with coronary stents. Due to low level of those drugs in biological fluids and their significant distribution into erythrocytes, sample preparation steps are critical for the determination and monitoring of these drugs...

Objective The main aim of this prospective study was to investigate the relationship between intrafollicular vitamin D and anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) concentration and its impact on oocyte quality and developmental competence. Methods The analysis was performed on 208 follicular fluid (FF) samples obtained from 33 patients undergoing ovarian sti...

This study assesses the potential of using ionic liquids (ILs) as mobile phase additives to control the retention mechanism of four cytostatic drugs: doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX), epirubicin hydrochloride (EPI), daunorubicin hydrochloride (DAU) and idarubicin hydrochloride (IDA). Chromatographic separations were performed on a C18 analytical col...

Lead (Pb) was revealed for its role as a neurodevelopmental toxin. The determination of neurotransmitters (NTs) in particular brain regions could ameliorate the precise description and optimization of therapeutic protocols able to restore the harmony of signaling pathways in nervous and immune systems. The determination of selected analytes from th...

The development of screening methods for the estimation of physicochemical, biological and pharmacokinetic properties of new pharmaceutical agents at early stage of the drug discovery and development process is highly desirable. Due to inadequate properties many of drug candidates are rejected during clinical trials. Among available screening metho...

Techniques of additive manufacturing commonly referred to as 3D-printing (3DP), obviously have taken a permanent place in the analytical chemistry laboratory toolbox. In the recent five years, one could observe the rapid spread of 3DP in several areas, especially in the instant design, prototyping, development, and final fabrication of custom analy...

Two series of novel 4-aryl-2H-pyrido[1,2-c]pyrimidine (6a–i) and 4-aryl-5,6,7,8-tetrahydropyrido[1,2-c]pyrimidine (7a–i) derivatives were synthesized. The chemical structures of the new compounds were confirmed by ¹H and ¹³C NMR spectroscopy and ESI-HRMS spectrometry. The affinities of all compounds for the 5-HT1A receptor and serotonin transporter...

Malignant neoplasms are among the most common diseases and are responsible for the majority of deaths in the developed world. In contrast to men, available data show a clear upward trend in the incidence of lung cancer in women, making it almost as prevalent as breast cancer. Women might be more susceptible to the carcinogenic effect of tobacco smo...

Amphotericin B (AmB), one of the most powerful but also toxic drugs used to treat systemic mycoses, is believed to selectively permeabilize fungal cell membranes to ions in a sterol-dependent manner. Unfortunately, the structure of the biologically active AmB channels has long eluded researchers, obstructing the design of safer alternatives. Here,...

A new approach for the sensitive, robust and rapid determination of idarubicin (IDA) in human plasma and urine samples based on liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (LC-FL) was developed. Satisfactory chromatographic separation of the analyte after solid-phase extraction (SPE) was performed on a Discovery HS C18 analytical column using...

Metabolic stability plays a crucial role in assessing the safety of potential drug candidates. Assays to designate in vitro half-life are well established and are focused on phase I metabolism using human liver microsomes. However, such an assay can easily be modified to include phase II metabolism. Yet, to authors best knowledge, no attempts at de...

The review aims to present the importance of implementing microextraction-, capillary electrophoresis- and ionic liquid-based approaches in biomedical research. These analytical strategies could improve the biochemical diagnosis of various life-threatening diseases, aid in the search for therapeutic agents and the discovery of drug targets and coul...

With metabolism being one of the main routes of drug elimination from the body (accounting for removal of around 75% of known drugs), it is crucial to understand and study metabolic stability of drug candidates. Metabolically unstable compounds are uncomfortable to administer (requiring repetitive dosage during therapy), while overly stable drugs i...

Metabolic stability tests are one of the fundamental steps at the preclinical stages of new drug development. Microsomes, used as a typical enzymatic model of liver biotransformation, can be a challenging matrix for analytical scientists due to a high concentration of cellular proteins and membrane lipids. In the work, we propose a new procedure in...

Prediction of the retention time from the molecular structure using quantitative structure-retention relationships is a powerful tool for the development of methods in reversed-phase HPLC. However, its fundamental limitation lies in the fact that low error in the prediction of the retention time does not necessarily guarantee a prediction of the el...

Nowadays screening methods for assessment of biological properties of drug candidates are highly desired. Among naturally occurring membranes, one of the most important is the blood–brain barrier (BBB). BBB plays crucial role for central nervous system active drug candidates, since each molecule targeting a receptor in the brain must pass through t...

The development of high-throughput methods for the estimation of physicochemical and biological properties of drug candidates is highly desired in the pharmaceutical landscape. Affinity to plasma protein is one of the most important biological properties, which should be taken under concern during the design and assessment of future potential medic...

The prominent biological effects of adrenaline (A), noradrenaline (NA) and dopamine (DA) as well as the clinical importance of their metabolites (such as dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC), methoxy-4-hydroxyphenyl glycol (MHPG), dihydroxyphenylglycol (DHPG), metanephrine (M), normetanephrine (NM), vanillylmandelic acid (VMA), homovanillic acid (HVA...

The main aim of this prospective study was to investigate the effect of the concentration of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K in individual follicles on oocyte quality and developmental competence. The analysis was performed on 313 follicular fluid (FF) samples from 50 patients undergoing ovarian stimulation with intracytoplasmic sperm injection....

Recent years have seen the increased utilization of ionic liquids (ILs) in the development and optimization of analytical methods. Their unique and eco-friendly properties and the ability to modify their structure allows them to be useful both at the sample preparation stage and at the separation stage of the analytes. The use of ILs for the analys...

Quantitative structure-retention relationships (QSRR) although widespread for prediction of retention time in reversed-phase liquid chromatography (RP-LC) suffer from the same limitation. Typically they are built for a specific set of chromatographic conditions (e.g., stationary phase, mobile phase composition, pH, temperature, total gradient time)...

In the early stages of drug discovery, beyond the biological activity screening, the physicochemical properties including lipophilicity, ionization, solubility as well as metabolic profiling and protein-binding affinity should be determined for each drug candidate. The aim of the presented investigation was the transfer of biopartitioning micellar...

In this study, a large volume sample stacking (LVSS) with polarity switching (PS) and cyclodextrin electrokinetic chromatography (CDEKC) method has been developed for the simultaneous separation and determination of 8 preservatives: methylparaben (MP), ethylparaben (EP), propylparaben (PP), butylparaben (BP), isobutylparaben (IBP), sorbic acid (SA)...

The lipophilicity of a molecule is a well-recognized as a crucial physicochemical factor that conditions the biological activity of a drug candidate. This study was aimed to evaluate the lipophilicity of isoxazolo[3,4-b]pyridine-3(1H)-ones and their N1-substituted derivatives, which demonstrated pronounced antifungal activities. Several methods, in...