Pharmaceutical analysis in drug development mainly focuses on methods to identify and quantify potential new drug candidates, determine purity, identify by – products and degradation products in compatibility and stability studies, and to determine the drug substance’s fate in the organism. Challenging tasks like these require sophisticated techniques, dedicated equipment and methods operated by highly skilled staff, often with a good academic background.

It is clear that pharmaceutical analysis plays a very important supporting role in drug development. Already during the conception of a candidate drug, for example by chemical synthesis, suitable analytical means are required to determine the identity and purity of the compound. Subsequent studies performed on candidate drugs with the aim of establishing the pharmacological, toxicological and therapeutic characteristics of the candidate drug vastly rely on bioanalysis.