Division of Residue Chemistry

Biography

Dr. Kithsiri B. Herath is a senior research scientist with the Division of Residue Chemistry in the Office of Research at FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM). He received his BSc degree in chemistry from the University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka) in 1992, his MPhil in chemical ecology from the University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka)/Cornell University in 1997, and his PhD in analytical chemistry/mass spectrometry from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2013. He worked in the Natural Product Drug Discovery and Biomarker Mass Spectrometry Groups at Merck Research Laboratories as a senior research chemist from 1999 to 2015. He joined FDA in 2015. His primary responsibilities at CVM include conducting and coordinating mainly high-resolution mass spectrometric analytical method developments for detecting veterinary drug residues in various matrices such as milk, meat, egg, feeds, etc. He is also an expert in bioanalytical chemistry, microchemical techniques, chromatography, natural products chemistry, and chemical ecology.

Research

• Screening and quantitative determination of veterinary drug residues in raw milk and other various matrices by high-resolution mass spectrometry
• Isolation and identification of unknown drug metabolites by mass spectrometry
• Mass spectrometric-based analytical method validation according to the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine and Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine guidelines
• Co-PI for the “Office of Chief Scientist Grant-2018” for Screening and quantitative determination of mixed-contaminants in raw-milk by high-resolution mass spectrometry

Select Publications

Herath, Kithsiri., Girard, Lauren., Reimschuessel, Renate., Jayasuriya Hiranthi Application of time-of-flight mass spectrometry for screening of crude glycerins for toxic phorbol ester contaminants, 2017 Journal of Chromatography B, 1046, 226–234.

Herath, K.B., Weisbecker, C.S., Singh, S.B. and Attygalle, A.B., 2014. Circumambulatory Movement of Negative Charge (“Ring Walk”) During Gas-Phase Dissociation of 2, 3, 4-Trimethoxybenzoate Anion. The Journal of Organic Chemistry, 79(10), pp.4378–4389.

Herath, K.B., Zhong, W., Yang, J., Mahsut, A., Rohm, R.J., Shah, V., Castro‐Perez, J., Zhou, H., Attygalle, A.B., Kang, L. and Singh, S., 2014. Determination of Low Levels of ²H‐Labeling Using High‐Resolution Mass Spectrometry: Application in Studies of Lipid Flux and Beyond. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 28(3), pp.239-244.

Herath, K. B., Jayasuriya, H., Zink, D. L., Sigmund, J., Vicente, F., de la Cruz, M., Basilio, A., Bills, G. F., Polishook, J. D., Donald, R., Phillips, J., Goetz, M. A., and Singh, S. B., 2012. Isolation, Structure Elucidation, and Biological Activity of Methiosetin, a Tetramic Acid from a Tropical Sooty Mold (Capnodium sp.). Journal of Natural Products, 75(3), pp.420–424.

Herath, K. B., Bhat, G., Miller, P. L., Wang, S-P., Kulick, A., Andrews-Kelly, G., Johnson, C., Rohm, R. J., Lassman, M. E., Previs, S. F., Johns, D. G., Hubbard, B. K., and Roddy, T. P., 2011. Equilibration of ²H-Labeling Between Body Water and Free Amino Acids: Enabling Studies of Proteome Synthesis. Analytical Biochemistry, 415(2), pp. 197–199.

Herath, K. B., Shah, V., Previs, S. F., Hubbard, B. K., and Roddy, T. P., 2010. Headspace Analyses of Acetone: A Rapid Method for Measuring the ²H-Labeling of Water. Analytical Biochemistry, 404(2), pp. 235–237.

Herath, K. B., Singh, S. B., and Attgalle, A. B., 2007. Biosynthetic Studies of Platensimycin. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 129(50), pp. 15422–15423.