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The AFRRI research team—James A. Pendergrass Jr., Venkataraman Srinivasan, K. Sree Kumar, William E. Jackson III, and Thomas M. Seed—used WR-2721 in a biodegradable, slow-release pellet designed for injection under the skin in laboratory mice. They studied whether the radioprotection of WR-2721 in mice correlates with the levels of WR-1065 found in the blood but, they wrote in their research paper, they needed "a reliable and sensitive method of analysis" to detect these compounds.

"Although WR-2721 is an excellent radioprotective drug," the researchers wrote in the Journal of AOAC International (vol. 85, No. 3, 2002, pages 551-554), "its use is limited because of toxicity. One approach to limiting toxicity is to slow down its release into the bloodstream."

Several laboratories use LC-ECD to measure WR-1065 and WR-33278, but the AFRRI research team was unable consistently to repeat in its laboratory the results reported in the literature. "We just weren't able to reproduce what some of those labs reported in the literature," Mr. Pendergrass said.

However, "I found a published report where a lab added cysteamine to their mobile phase and, voilà, I tried it and got reproducible results. Because I had tried so many methods and failed until I hit upon the current one, I wanted to publish a report that proved that my method was independently reproducible using similar equipment and the same mobile phase."

In the reported AFRRI experiments, "the measurements were repeatable day after day, and the accuracy and precision of each day's measurements were very acceptable," Mr. Pendergrass said. After he and his colleagues developed a method that was consistently reproducible, they then sought to show that another laboratory could duplicate their method.

The AFRRI researchers asked Dr. Wayne A. Kleinman of the American Health Foundation in Valhalla, NY, to reproduce their experiment, and he duplicated the thiol and disulfide measurements with similar accuracy and precision.