The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) recently announced that it is funding research projects focusing on detection of counterfeit medicines, improved dissolution techniques and characterization of biologics under its 2010-2011 fellowship program. Five early-career researchers will receive awards of $25,000 or $50,000 in support of their proposed projects, the USP announced Oct. 7.
These are all areas of interest for USP, especially biologics, which, with the growing interest in biosimilars, is certainly going to be front-row-center for the foreseeable future in this area, said Anthony DeStefano, PhD, vice president, general chapters, in USP s Documentary Standards Division.
For the first time in the history of the USP program, one fellow will receive a $50,000 award: Kaho Kwok, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at PurdueUniversity. His project, which used Raman spectroscopy and multivariate models to detect counterfeit medicines through characterization of excipients, is a technically more difficult undertaking that merited the larger award, Dr. DeStefano said in an interview with PFQ.
Many researchers are focusing on active pharmaceutical ingredients. This gentleman took a slightly different tack, with the idea that excipients are more prevalent in a product than the active in most cases, and seeing small differences there may help to identify counterfeits, he said.
The four doctoral candidate researchers who received $25,000 awards were Stephanie Archer-Hartmann at West Virginia University; Michael Jacobsen at the University of Utah; Mary Kleppe at the University of Connecticut; and Brian Krieg at the University of Michigan.
SOURCE:Pharmaceutical Formulation & Quality
