More than 100 participants, both from academia and industry, attended the meetings
SELECTBIO INDIA recently organised two international conferences on ‘Applications of Mass Spectrometry’ and ‘Advances in Forced Degradation Studies of Pharmaceuticals’ at CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad. More than 100 participants, both from academia and industry, attended the meetings. Among the keynote speakers were Dr Juergen Gross, Head Mass Spectrometry Lab, Heidelberg University, Germany and Dr Saranjit Singh, Professor/ Head, Pharmaceutical Sciences, NIPER Mohali, India.
The workshop on mass spectrometry was conducted at NCMS Lab, at the end of applications of mass spectrometry conference. The workshop included live demonstrations on ‘LC-MS-MS, GC-MS, LC-MS, HRMS, MALDI-TOF/TOF’ with interpretation of various mass spectra.
The conferences were inaugurated by Dr Juergen Gross, Dr Saranjit Singh, Dr M Vairamani, Dean, School of Bioengeneering, SRM University, Chennai.
Dr Sanjay Bajaj, Managing Director, SELECTBIO INDIA, welcomed the speakers and delegates and introduced to them the organisation and its activities. He informed the audience that SELECTBIO is now doing over 100 events annually across the globe and over 25 events annually only in India. He also introduced their new events and the new activities like ‘Medha-Knowledge Contest’ which is open to all scientists, ‘Feeling & Thoughts’ and ‘Know Your Speaker.’ He also informed the audience about a new division, TechNet India. This was followed by felicitating the sponsors namely, ACD Labs, Lhasa.
The opening talk at the Scientific Session 1 in Applications of Mass Spectrometry conference was delivered by Dr M Vairamani, Dean, School of Bio-Engineering, SRM University. He explained various mass spectrometry approaches like Electron Ionization, REIMS, Surgical Mass Spectrometry, MALDIDESI, DESI-MS Imaging, Paper Spray Ionisation, Molecular Ionisation from Carbon Nanotube Paper and Megavolt Electrostatic Ionisation.
Gross, speaking in his keynote talk, explained several principles related to mass instruments and outlined the properties of various mass analysers like time-of-flight, magnetic sector, linear quadrupole, linear quadrupole ion trap, fourier transform-ion cyclotron resonance, and orbitrap.
Dr R Srinivas, Head, NCMS, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad elucidated some basic aspects of mass spectral interpretation.
The last talk in this session was a technology spotlight i.e. company presentation which was presented by KK Bhagchandani, Director, Advanced Chemistry Development.
The last session of this conference was on the advanced applications of mass spectrometry. The first talk in this session was delivered by Gross. He overviewed various Ambient MS techniques like ASAP, DAPCI, DAPPI, DART, DESI, DeSSI. He explained the DART Ionisation as the aspect of mass calibration in both positive ion and negative ion modes. He discussed that due to both positive ion and negative ion modes DART-MS has shown broad applications for rapid analysis of complex molecules. In his presentation he also explained various applications of DART-MS.
Dr Utpal Tatu, Professor, Department of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, in his presentation, described the mass spectrometric analysis of the clinical proteomes of Plasmodium falciparum and Trypanosoma evansi, identification of diagnostic antigens for diagnosis of animal Trypanosomosis as well as mass spectrometric identification of a novel trans-splicing-based expression of Hsp90 in Giardia lamblia.
The scientific sessions on Advances in Forced Degradation Studies of Pharmaceuticals was initiated by Singh, who compared stress testing studies given in various Pharmacopoeias and in regulatory guidelines with day-to-day experiments. Alok Chaudhary, Senior Research Scientist, Ranbaxy discussed various forced degradation studies and protocols from the perspective of the pharma industry.
The session also included a technology spotlight i.e. company presentation by KK Bhagchandani, Director Advanced Chemistry Development. In his presentation he discussed that R&Ds can save time in identifying, characterising and evaluating impurities and degradants.
Singh elaborated the relevance and importance of degradation products in pharma substances and products. He highlighted a strategy for the characterisation of degradation products involving use of hyphenated LC-MS, LC-NMR and LC-IR techniques. The same was duly explained through multiple case studies.
Srinivas explained the identification and structural characterisation of drug degradation products and metabolites by liquid chromatography, electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry (LC MS/MS, MSn) combined with H/D exchange.
Dr R Nageswara Rao, Chief Scientist/Head, Analytical Chemistry, CSIR-IICT, Hyderabad explained the major mechanisms of chemical decomposition of pharmaceuticals including hydrolysis/dehydration, oxidation, isomerisation/ epimerisation, decarboxylation, rearrangements, dimerisation/ polymerisation and photolysis and transformation products involving reactions with excipient/ salt forms.
The event concluded with presentation of posters award. The poster by Manisha Puranik was adjudged the best amongst the rest and was awarded the ‘Best Poster Award.’ Dr Sanjay Bajaj, Managing Director, SELECTBIO INDIA closed the conference with his closing remarks and also presented the vote of thanks.
EP News Bureau – Mumbai
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