1 pm BST | 2 pm CEST | 8 am EDT
Tony Edge, President of The Chromatographic Society (Chrom Soc), Avantor
Tony Edge is an R&D Manager heading a team of specialist scientist in developing next generation stationary phases for HPLC. He has worked in both manufacturing and also industry, having periods of employment at LGC and also AstraZeneca as well as ThermoFisherScientific, Agilent Technologies and latterly Avantor. In 2008, he was fortunate enough to be awarded the Desty memorial lecture for his contributions to innovating separation science, and in the same year also won a clinical excellence award from AstraZeneca. He has been President of the UK Chromatographic Society for 5 years.
1:15 pm BST | 2:15 pm CEST | 8:15 am EDT | KEYNOTE TALK
Tim Underwood, Global Director of Purification, Medicines Design, GSK, UK,GSK, Purifications, Medicines, Design, UK
Screening approaches to rapidly identify separation systems for analytical and purification work are nothing new. Many screening strategies have been developed across the industry and many are fit for purpose. However, synthetic chemistry departments within pharma are looking again towards high throughput chemistry (HTC) techniques and are both producing and predicting much larger outputs. To enable specialist/bespoke analytical and purification functions to keep pace with modern HTC demands, we should constantly challenge how we operate our screens. This talk will focus on how we have done that at GSK and the gains we have been able to deliver as a result. Analytical techniques covered include HPLC, UHPLC, and SFC.
1:45 pm BST | 2:45 pm CEST | 8:45 am EDT
Helena Rapp-Wright, Research Associate, MRC Centre for Environment & Health, Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
Water pollution is one of the biggest concerns as a potential hazard for the environment and, consequently, for human health. Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are small molecules which are increasingly being shown to occur in water samples across the world, present at ng/L to µg/L concentrations, and their risks require further investigation. The breadth of such compounds is increasing, and an example is pharmaceuticals, one of the main CEC classes. Therefore, there is a constant need for reliable analytical methods for identification and their determination to detect them due to their presence at low levels. Now, the challenge lies in scaling up analytical platforms to cope with large throughput for samples collected at high spatiotemporal resolution. Mass spectrometry (MS) has become increasingly sensitive, and opportunities now exist to perform direct-injection analysis, thereby minimising the need for labour and time-intensive preconcentration steps. The key challenge for high throughput methods is to achieve sufficient separation of CECs in a very short time, to maximise MS sensitivity. Another challenge lies in performing sufficiently rapid mass spectrometry to provide high quality data for quantification purposes. The injection of large volumes of sample, for example 100 μL or more, should be minimised to enable hundreds of samples to be injected so not to adversely affect instrument performance. The development of a rapid quantitative direct-injection LC–MS/MS method for 135 CECs at low ng/L concentrations in untreated wastewater and river water is discussed. All compounds were analysed within 5 min on a short 5-mm biphenyl cartridge using only 10 μL of filtered sample for each injection. The source of selected CECs could also be rapidly identified and differentiated from other sources at pre- and post- wastewater treatment plant effluent discharge points, as well as the effect of dilution downstream, which occurred over very short distances in all cases. Environmental risk assessment (ERA) for CECs was performed at specific impacted sites, estimating a high risk (Risk Quotient > 10) for diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory pharmaceutical in some catchments. Lastly, the opportunities for translation of this targeted approach to direct-injection liquid chromatography coupled to full scan high resolution mass spectrometry is discussed, with a focus on suspect screening in wastewater analysis. The application of higher-throughput methods like this sets a new standard for the speedy and confident monitoring of hundreds to thousands of CECs in water at the part-per-trillion level to help better understand any risks.
2:05 pm BST | 3:05 pm CEST | 9:05 am EDT
Caroline West, Professor in Analytical Chemistry, University of Orleans, ICOA, CNRS UMR7311, France
Chiral supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) has been largely employed for more than two decades, particularly in the pharmaceutical industries. Achiral SFC, however, has not been so frequently used up until more recently. The introduction of analytical SFC instruments that are better fitted to current expectations of chromatographers in terms of robustness and sensitivity has largely contributed to a renewed interest in this most versatile technique. Following the trend observed in HPLC, SFC has moved towards ultrahigh efficiency methods (UHPSFC), through the use of sub-2-µm stationary phase particles. I will illustrate the interest of analytical UHPSFC to analyze small molecules. Comparison to the more frequently used reversed-phase UHPLC will be provided, especially in the context of pharmaceuticals and natural products analysis.
2:25 pm BST | 3:25 pm CEST | 9:25 am EDT
3:15 pm BST | 4:15 pm CEST | 10:15 am EDT
Mark Moorman, VP AA/AI, LabVantage
Today’s pharmaceutical laboratories are being pushed to produce more, faster. The dynamic changes are pushing the AI revolution into the laboratory as a necessity. But most labs are not ready to leverage the power. This discussion will cover how AI can be leveraged to automate redundant tasks, increase accuracy, and decrease time and resources. It will cover the integration of AI into laboratory applications such as LIMS, ELN, instruments, etc. to drive valuable outcomes in less time with less resources.
3:35 pm BST | 4:35 pm CEST | 10:35 am EDT
Dr. Richard Ladd, Principal, RML Consulting
This talk discusses the analytical challenges with the detection and quantification of trace level impurities in pharmaceutical products including mutagenic nitrosamine impurities. Different technologies available for trace level analysis are considered with emphasis on a new Vacuum Ultraviolet detector that is providing sensitivity, selectivity, and simplicity required to analyze these compounds.
President of The Chromatographic Society (Chrom Soc), Avantor
Tony Edge is an R&D Manager heading a team of specialist scientist in developing next generation stationary phases for HPLC. He has worked in both manufacturing and also industry, having periods of employment at LGC and also AstraZeneca as well as ThermoFisherScientific, Agilent Technologies and latterly Avantor. In 2008, he was fortunate enough to be awarded the Desty memorial lecture for his contributions to innovating separation science, and in the same year also won a clinical excellence award from AstraZeneca. He has been President of the UK Chromatographic Society for 5 years.
Committee Member, The Chromatography Society
Dr. Poole is a committee member of the Chromatography Society and works with the team to organize events such as the recent Spring Symposium. With a PhD in biochemistry, Dr Helen Poole has over 2 decades of experience in the chromatography industry, working closely with key suppliers and supporting customers across a range of industries both nationally and internationally. Dr Poole has a particular interest in bio-pharmaceutical chromatography. In her current role at Avantor, she works closely with both suppliers and customers providing technical and application help and advice as well as bespoke training.
Global Director of Purification, Medicines Design, GSK, UK
Tim has worked for GSK for 38 years and made his first injection on a HPLC instrument on 6 August 1984 (his very first day). Beginning in production monitoring and with separation science never straying far from his professional requirements, Tim transferred to R&D after 5 years to become a research chromatographer in the Structural Chemistry department. In the subsequent years, the department name changed more often than his job title! The department is now Discovery Analytical and he now oversees all purification and bespoke analytical activities globally in support of small molecule discovery synthetic chemistry.
Research Associate, MRC Centre for Environment & Health, Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, UK
Dr Helena Rapp Wright earned her BSc in chemistry at the University of La Laguna (ULL, Spain) in 2014 and an MRes in forensic science at King’s College London (KCL, UK) in 2016. During her BSc and MRes, she undertook an industrial placement and two research projects focused on analytical chemistry. Following her MRes study, she worked at LGC (Fordham, UK) for two years in the small molecules department for bioanalytical sciences. Her work focused on developing analytical techniques for the identification and quantification of drugs from clinical trials, as well as their sample analysis. In 2018, she successfully secured a PhD studentship sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Ireland. Her PhD was held in the School of Chemical Sciences at Dublin City University (DCU) and part-time at KCL, researching contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in environmental water samples. Her PhD was completed in 2021, and she is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College London within the Emerging Chemical Contaminant Group. Helena (or Dr Rapp Wright) is also a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of analytical and environmental chemistry, mainly wastewater analysis, and contaminants of emerging concern.
Professor in Analytical Chemistry, University of Orleans, ICOA, CNRS UMR7311, France
Caroline West is a full professor in analytical chemistry at the University of Orleans, France. Her main scientific interests lie in fundamentals of chromatographic selectivity, both in the achiral and chiral modes mainly in SFC, but also in HPLC. She also applies these methods to samples of pharmaceutical interest and natural products.
She has authored six book chapters and more than 100 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and has presented about 100 lectures in national and international conferences and seminars. She is also an advisory board member for several journals in separation science. In 2015, she received the “LCGC Emerging Leader in Chromatography” award from LCGC North America.
VP AA/AI, LabVantage
As the VP of AA/AI Mark leads the go-to-market for the analytics solutions for LabVantage. He works closely with customers, partners, and associates to drive successful outcomes by leveraging data assets for business value. Mark is a data scientist by trade and training which enables him to act as a trusted advisor to our customers and to understand how business problems can be successfully solved with the use of technology, data, and algorithms. He firmly believes that AI and ML provide real business value to organizations everywhere and that the wise use of these technologies is a competitive advantage.
Principal, RML Consulting
Richard is an independent consultant to the pharmaceutical industry specializing in pharmaceutical development, technology, and manufacture. He has more than 35 years pharmaceutical industry experience and an extensive track record of delivering in scientific, line and project leadership roles across Pharmaceutical R&D, regulatory CMC at the Interface between academia and the public sector.
