Analysis of recent pharmaceutical regulatory documents on analytical method validation

All analysts face the same situations as method validation is the process of proving that an analytical method is acceptable for its intended purpose. In order to resolve this problem, the analyst refers to regulatory or guidance documents, and therefore the validity of the analytical methods is dependent on the guidance, terminology and methodology, proposed in these documents. It is therefore of prime importance to have clear definitions of the different validation criteria used to assess this validity. It is also necessary to have methodologies in accordance with these definitions and consequently to use statistical methods which are relevant with these definitions, the objective of the validation and the objective of the analytical method. The main purpose of this paper is to outline the inconsistencies between some definitions of the criteria and the experimental procedures proposed to evaluate those criteria in recent documents dedicated to the validation of analytical methods in the pharmaceutical field, together with the risks and problems when trying to cope with contradictory, and sometimes scientifically irrelevant, requirements and definitions.     

Green approach using monolithic column for simultaneous determination of coformulated drugs

Green chemistry and sustainability is now entirely encompassed across the majority of pharmaceutical companies and research labs. Researchers’ attention is careworn toward implementing the green analytical chemistry principles for more eco‐friendly analytical methodologies. Solvents play a dominant role in determining the greenness of the analytical procedure. Using safer solvents, the greenness profile of the methodology could be increased remarkably. In this context, a green chromatographic method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of phenylephrine, paracetamol, and guaifenesin in their ternary pharmaceutical mixture. The chromatographic separation was carried out using monolithic column and green solvents as mobile phase. The use of monolithic column allows efficient separation protocols at higher flow rates, which results in short time of analysis. Two‐factor three‐level experimental design was used to optimize the chromatographic conditions. The greenness profile of the proposed methodology was assessed using eco‐scale as a green metrics and was found to be an excellent green method with regard to the usage and production of hazardous chemicals and solvents, energy consumption, and amount of produced waste. The proposed method improved the environmental impact without compromising the analytical performance criteria and could be used as a safer alternate for the routine analysis of the studied drugs.     

Quantitative determination of diethylene glycol contamination in pharmaceutical products

A simple, rapid, and reliable method was developed for the quantitative determination of diethylene glycol (DEG) in pharmaceutical products using capillary gas chromatography with flame ionization detection. The method uses ethylene glycol as internal standard and allows for the separation of propylene glycol and DEG. The assay was linear in a DEG concentration range between 1.0 and 10.00 mg/mL, with coefficients of variation of 2.3-4.4% for the tested concentrations. Quantitation and detection limits, respectively, were 1.0 mg/mL and 0.15 mg/mL diethylene glycol. The method was used to analyze 3 pharmaceutical products possibly contaminated with diethylene glycol, of which one was suspected of causing intoxication and death in children. Infrared spectroscopy was used to confirm the identity of diethylene glycol. This analytical methodology is proposed for evaluation of pharmaceutical products containing glycols to prevent intoxication and for security level verification.     

Fabrication of Sensitive Membrane Electrodes and their Application in Electrochemical Quantification of Ibandronate in Dosage Form

A new, highly selective, simple and accurate method was adopted and validated for the direct quantification of ibandronate sodium monohydrate (IBN) in tablets using sensitive polyvinyl chloride membrane electrodes. Three membranes were fabricated using dibutyl sebacate, nitrophenyl octyl ether and dioctyl phthalate. The fabricated electrodes showed fast response, capability of application in wide pH range and direct determination of IBN in turbid solutions. The most important advantage of the proposed analytical method is that it successfully allows direct determination of IBN in dosage form. The proposed analytical methodology can be applied for the direct quantification of IBN in pharmaceutical formulations.     

Quantification of lysine clonixinate in intravenous injections by NIR spectroscopy

Migraine is a very painful and somewhat unpredictable ache that affects millions of people worldwide and for which no definite medicine exists, yet. New drugs and/or pharmaceutical forms are being developed, for which new quantitation methods are required. Lysine clonixinate (LC) has proved very advantageous to alleviate migraine episodes although, so far, no analytical procedures have been reported to quantify it in pharmaceutical dosage forms usually employed by physicians, i.e., injectable solutions. In this paper a NIR spectral method was developed and validated against international pharmaceutical standard guidelines and a new UV-based method to quantify LC in intravenous injection solutions. Both methods are almost inexpensive, fast, simple and suitable for LC routine determination. In addition, they provide analytical protocols less time-consuming than other reported HPLC methods (developed for other matrices), proved to be specific, accurate, precise and linear within the typical working range, according to the Harmonized Tripartite Guideline of Validation of Analytical Procedures from the International Conference on Harmonization. Both methods yield equivalent results and they are useful to monitor the concentration of LC in injectable solutions in routine analysis.     

Quantification of lysine clonixinate in intravenous injections by NIR spectroscopy

Migraine is a very painful and somewhat unpredictable ache that affects millions of people worldwide and for which no definite medicine exists, yet. New drugs and/or pharmaceutical forms are being developed, for which new quantitation methods are required. Lysine clonixinate (LC) has proved very advantageous to alleviate migraine episodes although, so far, no analytical procedures have been reported to quantify it in pharmaceutical dosage forms usually employed by physicians, i.e., injectable solutions. In this paper a NIR spectral method was developed and validated against international pharmaceutical standard guidelines and a new UV-based method to quantify LC in intravenous injection solutions. Both methods are almost inexpensive, fast, simple and suitable for LC routine determination. In addition, they provide analytical protocols less time-consuming than other reported HPLC methods (developed for other matrices), proved to be specific, accurate, precise and linear within the typical working range, according to the Harmonized Tripartite Guideline of Validation of Analytical Procedures from the International Conference on Harmonization. Both methods yield equivalent results and they are useful to monitor the concentration of LC in injectable solutions in routine analysis.     

A full-scale tracing study of “ghost peaks” encountered in impurity analysis of budesonide based on experimental operation inspection-liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry fingerprint-mechanism based stress studies integrated strategy

Budesonide is an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in various dosage forms of finished products for the treatment of asthma. During the process of drug development, unbiased analysis of related substances is of utmost significance for both pharmaceutical research and quality control purposes. In this work, the official method documented in the United States Pharmacopoeia was selected to determine the related substances of budesonide considering the pros and cons of critical chromatographic parameters, compared to the European Pharmacopoeia. In doing so, several unpredictable interference peaks, namely “ghost peaks”, were observed occasionally during analysis. A strategy that integrated information derived from experimental operation inspection, liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry fingerprint analysis, and mechanism-based stress studies was then proposed for comprehensively and quickly exploring those non-degradable and degradable peaks. Some ghost peaks were found to originate from nylon syringe filter, illumination, and alkali borosilicate glass high-performance liquid chromatography vials. Besides, degradation pathways under alkaline conditions were also unraveled through liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry qualitative analysis. Overall, an optimization of the analytical methodology based on the United States Pharmacopoeia for its application in impurity analysis of budesonide and corresponding formulations was carried out with the design of experiments, by which “ghost peaks” could be suppressed or prevented. The results obtained herein are not only crucial to studies on budesonide's stability or degradation kinetics but also contribute to clarifying the impurity research of other drugs.     

Simultaneous voltammetric determination of levodopa, carbidopa and benserazide in pharmaceuticals using multivariate calibration

An analytical methodology based on differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) on a glassy carbon electrode and the partial least-squares (PLS-1) algorithm for the simultaneous determination of levodopa, carbidopa and benserazide in pharmaceutical formulations was developed and validated. Some sources of bi-linearity deviation for electrochemical data are discussed and analyzed. The multivariate model was developed as a ternary calibration model and it was built and validated with an independent set of drug mixtures in presence of excipients, according with manufacturer specifications. The proposed method was applied to both the assay and the uniformity content of two commercial formulations containing mixtures of levodopa-carbidopa (10:1) and levodopa-benserazide (4:1). The results were satisfactory and statistically comparable to those obtained by applying the reference Pharmacopoeia method based on high performance liquid chromatography. In conclusion, the methodology proposed based on DPV data processed with the PLS-1 algorithm was able to quantify simultaneously levodopa, carbidopa and benserazide in its pharmaceuticals formulations using a ternary calibration model for these drugs in presence of excipients. Furthermore, the model appears to be successful even in the presence of slight potential shifts in the processed data, which have been taken into account by the flexible chemometric PLS-1 approach.     

Analysis of class 1 residual solvents in pharmaceuticals using headspace-programmed temperature vaporization-fast gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A sensitive method is presented for the fast screening and determination of residual class 1 solvents (1,1-dichloroethene, 1,2-dichloroethane, 1,1,1-trichloroethane, carbon tetrachloride and benzene) in pharmaceutical products. The applicability of a headspace (HS) autosampler in combination with GC equipped with a programmed temperature vaporizer (PTV) and a MS detector is explored. Different injection techniques were compared. The benefits of using solvent vent injection instead of split or splitless-hot injection for the measurement of volatile compounds are shown: better peak shapes, better signal-to-noise ratios, and hence better detection limits. The proposed method is extremely sensitive. The limits of detection ranged from 4.9 ppt (benzene) to 7.9 ppt (1,2-dichloroethane) and precision (measured as the relative standard deviation) was equal to or lower than 12% in all cases. The method was applied to the determination of residual solvents in nine different pharmaceutical products. The analytical performance of the method shows that it is appropriate for the determination of residual class 1 solvents and has much lower detection limits than the concentration limits proposed by the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) of Technical Requirements for the Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. The proposed method achieves a clear improvement in sensitivity with respect to conventional headspace methods due to the use of the PTV.     

High performance liquid chromatography method for determination of methyl-5-benzoyl-2-benzimidazole carbamate (mebendazole) and its main degradation product in pharmaceutical dosage forms

Methyl-5-benzoyl-2-benzimidazole carbamate (mebendazole) is a drug used as an anthelmintic. A high performance liquid chromatography method has been developed in this study to determine mebendazole and its degradation product in the pharmaceutical dosage forms (tablets and suspension). The expected major degradation product of mebendazole in the dosage forms has been prepared, and identified as 2-amino-5-benzoylbenzimidazole. The proposed HPLC assay was found to be selective, accurate (% recoveries were in the range of 99.9-100.9) for both, mebendazole and the degradation product, repeatable and reproducible (replicate measurements for short and long term measurements showed % RSD of 相似文献   

Development of an ultra high performance liquid chromatography method for determining triamcinolone acetonide in hydrogels using the design of experiments/design space strategy in combination with process capability index

An ultra high performance liquid chromatography method was developed and validated for the quantitation of triamcinolone acetonide in an injectable ophthalmic hydrogel to determine the contribution of analytical method error in the content uniformity measurement. During the development phase, the design of experiments/design space strategy was used. For this, the free R‐program was used as a commercial software alternative, a fast efficient tool for data analysis. The process capability index was used to find the permitted level of variation for each factor and to define the design space. All these aspects were analyzed and discussed under different experimental conditions by the Monte Carlo simulation method. Second, a pre‐study validation procedure was performed in accordance with the International Conference on Harmonization guidelines. The validated method was applied for the determination of uniformity of dosage units and the reasons for variability (inhomogeneity and the analytical method error) were analyzed based on the overall uncertainty.     

High Performance Liquid Chromatography versus Stacking-Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography for the Determination of Potentially Toxic Alkenylbenzenes in Food Flavouring Ingredients

Alkenylbenzenes, including eugenol, methyleugenol, myristicin, safrole, and estragole, are potentially toxic phytochemicals, which are commonly found in foods. Occurrence data in foods depends on the quality of the analytical methodologies available. Here, we developed and compared modern reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and stacking-micellar electrokinetic chromatography (MEKC) methods for the determination of the above alkenylbenzenes in food flavouring ingredients. The analytical performance of HPLC was found better than the stacking-MEKC method. Compared to other HPLC methods found in the literature, our method was faster (total run time with conditioning of 15 min) and able to separate more alkenylbenzenes. In addition, the analytical methodology combining an optimized methanol extraction and proposed HPLC was then applied to actual food flavouring ingredients. This methodology should be applicable to actual food samples, and thus will be vital to future studies in the determination of alkenylbenzenes in food.     

Multi-residue analytical methods for the determination of pesticides and PPCPs in water by LC-MS/MS: a review

Residues of pesticides, pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) are contaminants of world-wide concern. Consequently, there is a growing need to develop reliable analytical methods, which enable rapid, sensitive and selective determination of these pollutants in environmental samples, at trace levels. In this paper, a review of the liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) based methods for the determination of pesticides and PPCPs in the environment is presented. Advanced aspects of current LC-MS/MS methodology, including sample preparation and matrix effects, are discussed.     

Differential pulse voltammetric determination of benznidazole loaded in nanostructured lipid carriers and urine**

Benznidazole (BZN) is the first-choice drug for treating Chagas disease (CD). However, it is not ideal for this purpose as it is highly toxic and has irregular pharmacokinetics due to factors such as its low aqueous solubility. These factors necessitate the development of reliable and effective alternative methods for the analytical determination of BZN in biological and pharmaceutical samples. In this context, we present a new electroanalytical method for quantifying BZN using differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and a glassy carbon electrode (GCE). This method was applied to urine and a pharmaceutical formulation of BZN incorporated into nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC-BZN). The proposed method provided a linear analytical range of 1.00–10.6 μmol L⁻¹ (R=0.999), with a detection limit of 0.044 μmol L⁻¹ and a quantification limit of 0.13 μmol L⁻¹. The relative standard deviation of the intra-day and inter-day precision was below 2.50 %. Through interference studies, the methodology proved to be selective for BZN, because there was no significant potential interference in any of the samples. The recovery tests showed that the accuracy was within the limits recommended in the literature. Therefore, the developed DPV/GCE method can be successfully applied as an alternative method for detecting BZN in NLC-BZN pharmaceutical formulations and human urine.     

Emerging analytical methods to determine gluten markers in processed foods—method development in support of standard setting

The availability of analytical methods to detect and determine levels of markers of priority allergens in foods is of the utmost importance to support standard setting initiatives, the development of compliance and enforcement activities, as well as to provide guidance to industry on implementation of quality control practices, ensuring the effectiveness of allergen-related sanitation techniques. This paper describes the development and implementation of a mass-spectrometry-based technique to determine markers for individual sources of gluten in beer products. This methodology was shown to answer the requirements of Health Canada’s proposed labeling standard for individual gluten source declaration, in order to achieve its policy objectives (i.e., protection of sensitive consumers, while promoting choice). Minimal sample work-up was required and the results obtained by ELISA were further complemented using the LC-MS/MS method. This paper aims to demonstrate the feasibility of alternative techniques to ELISA-based methodologies to determine allergen and gluten markers in food.     

Enantiospecific analysis by capillary electrophoresis: applications in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics

Enantiospecific analysis has an important role in drug metabolism and pharmacokinetic investigations and its now no longer acceptable to determine total drug, or metabolite, concentrations following the administration of a racemate. Inspite of the fact that capillary electrophoresis (CE) has become an essential technique in pharmaceutical and enantiospecific analysis, the chromatographic methodologies remain the most commonly used approach for the determination of the enantiomeric composition of drugs in biological fluids. The application of CE to bioanalysis has been slow, which is in part associated with the complexity of biological matrices together with the relatively poor concentration limits of detection achievable. However, as a result of its versatility, high separation efficiency, minimal sample requirements, speed of analysis and low consumable expense CE is likely to play an increasingly significant role in the area. This review present an overview of enantiospecific CE in bioanalysis in which the approaches to enantiomeric resolution and the problems associated with biological matrices are briefly discussed. The application of enantiospecific CE to samples of biological origin is illustrated using examples where the methodology has either solved an analytical problem, or provided a useful alternative to the currently available chromatographic methods. Such improvements in methodology are associated with either the high separation efficiency and/or microanalytical capabilities of the technique. Enantiospecific CE will not replace the chromatographic methodologies but does provide the bioanalyst with a useful addition to his armamentarium.     

Validation of analytical methods involved in dissolution assays: Acceptance limits and decision methodologies

Dissolution tests are key elements to ensure continuing product quality and performance. The ultimate goal of these tests is to assure consistent product quality within a defined set of specification criteria. Validation of an analytical method aimed at assessing the dissolution profile of products or at verifying pharmacopoeias compliance should demonstrate that this analytical method is able to correctly declare two dissolution profiles as similar or drug products as compliant with respect to their specifications. It is essential to ensure that these analytical methods are fit for their purpose. Method validation is aimed at providing this guarantee. However, even in the ICHQ2 guideline there is no information explaining how to decide whether the method under validation is valid for its final purpose or not. Are the entire validation criterion needed to ensure that a Quality Control (QC) analytical method for dissolution test is valid? What acceptance limits should be set on these criteria? How to decide about method's validity? These are the questions that this work aims at answering. Focus is made to comply with the current implementation of the Quality by Design (QbD) principles in the pharmaceutical industry in order to allow to correctly defining the Analytical Target Profile (ATP) of analytical methods involved in dissolution tests. Analytical method validation is then the natural demonstration that the developed methods are fit for their intended purpose and is not any more the inconsiderate checklist validation approach still generally performed to complete the filing required to obtain product marketing authorization.     

Advanced mass spectrometric methods applied to the study of fate and removal of pharmaceuticals in wastewater treatment

This overview is of analytical methodologies based on gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, applied in environmental monitoring of pharmaceutical residues and their known degradation products. We also consider the ability of time-of-flight (TOF) and quadrupole-TOF instruments to provide sufficiently accurate-mass measurements and full-scan spectra for unequivocal confirmation of target compounds and investigation of their degradation products, which are either known or unknown.

We focus attention on the fate and the behavior of pharmaceutical residues during conventional and advanced wastewater treatments. Wastewater-treatment plants are designed to remove conventional pollutants (e.g., suspended solids and biodegradable organic compounds), but not low concentrations of synthetic pollutants (e.g., pharmaceutically active compounds).

Membrane bioreactor systems represent a new generation of processes that have proved to outperform conventional activated sludge treatment in terms of sludge production and effluent quality. In the past few years, there has been much attention paid to their capability for removing trace organic contaminants from sewage. This review highlights their improved performance in removing pharmaceutical residues from wastewater compared to conventional treatment.     

Development of formulation, manufacturing technology, and standardization of solid pharmaceutical dosage form of Dilept, a novel atypical neuroleptic

The optimum formulation, manufacturing technology, and analytical techniques were developed for an atypical neuroleptic Dilept in a solid dosage form (tablets). It has been shown that the direct compression of a tableting mass with a 1 : 9 ratio of substance to ludipress will be the optimum method for manufacturing these tablets. The proposed procedures for identifying and determining the impurity content and dosage uniformity, as well as for quantitatively determining the substance content in a tablet, are based on the HPLC method. UV spectrophotometry is recommended as a method for the quantitative assessment of the therapeutic substance released from tablets during the dissolution test. Using the accelerated aging test, it has been shown that the quality of tablets during a period equivalent to a two-year shelf life under natural storage conditions is preserved.