Raman Spectroscopy - Articles and news items

Raman seminar at the Natural History Museum

Featured news, News / 3 November 2011 / Renishaw

Raman spectroscopy came under the spotlight recently at the Natural History Museum in London, when Renishaw held its 2011 ‘inside Raman’ seminar in the Museum’s Flett theatre on 26th and 27th September.

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A new approach to quality control and cost reduction in manufacturing

Featured news, News / 27 October 2011 / Mike Claybourn, Raman Product Manager, HORIBA Scientific, 16 rue du Canal, 91160 Longjumeau France

Introduction

The focus of this article is Raman spectroscopy, a technology that has a long pedigree of success in Pharmaceutical Development but has needed an evolutionary step to tech transfer effectively into Pharmaceutical Production. This change has now come through an innovative approach to whole tablet and capsule measurement called Transmission Raman Spectroscopy (TRS). There is now a flurry of activities across the industry to implement this technology into key unit processes and as a new opportunity to support a robust Real Time Release (RTR) strategy.

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Raman supplement (free to view)

Issue 5 2011, Supplements / 24 October 2011 / Alain Hédoux, Klara Dégardin, Yves Roggo

Solid state transformations of APIS during manufacturing by Raman analysis of pharmaceutical molecules and dosage forms – Alain Hédoux, University Lille Nord de France; Detection, determination of chemical composition and chemical profiling of counterfeit medicines – Klara Dégardin, F. Hoffmann-La Roche & Institute of Forensic Science, University of Lausanne, Yves Roggo, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Pierre Margot & Frederic Been, Institute of Forensic Science, University of Lausanne (more…)

Application of deep UV resonance raman spectroscopy to bioprocessing

Issue 3 2011 / 20 June 2011 / Lorna Ashton and Royston Goodacre, School of Chemistry, Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester

In recent years, Raman spectroscopy has been successfully applied to bioprocessing, including industrial processes. Raman studies have typically been aimed at measuring accurately both product yields and the presence of secondary products; including glucose and ethanol levels as well as secondary metabolites present in complex non-fractionated fermentation broths1,2. However, Raman spectroscopy as a tool for monitoring the complex structural changes occurring during protein production has to date been under utilised, particularly the use of the extremely sensitive structural technique of UV resonance Raman (UVRR) spectroscopy.

The biopharmaceutical market, although currently a relatively small percentage of conventional pharmaceuticals, continues to expand with predicted revenues of over USD 100 billion for 20103-5. With continual demand for high fidelity products, from recombinant therapeutic proteins to nucleic acid-based medicinal products, the need for reliable, cost effective and appropriate analytical techniques for assessing the conformity of the products is still paramount3,5. (more…)

Authentication of medicines using Raman spectroscopy

Issue 1 2011 / 16 February 2011 / Sulaf Assi, University of Hertfordshire, and Robert Watt & Tony Moffat, The School of Pharmacy, University of London

Raman spectroscopy offers a rapid and non-destructive technique for the identification of counterfeit medicines. Handheld Raman instruments offer the advantages of carrying the laboratory to the sample and giving a rapid pass or fail answer for the medicine inspected. It can identify a medicine regardless of its physical form as a tablet, powder, ointment, cream or liquid. However, the technique is limited as not all species of a medicine have a Raman scattering. Thus, the Raman spectrum obtained upon measuring a medicine might be due to the active pharmaceutical ingredient or any other excipient in the bulk or the coating of the formulation. (more…)

Raman spectroscopy and cancer cells

Issue 4 2010 / 19 August 2010 / Andrew Riches, Professor of Experimental Pathology, School of Medicine, University of St. Andrews and Co-authors: C. Simon Herrington, School of Medicine Kishan Dholakia, Elisabetta Canetta, Antonia Carruthers, Michael Mazilu, Anna Chiara de Luca, School of Physics & Astronomy Chris Goodman, Greg Kata, Nabi Ghulam, Kadi Nourdin, Department of Urology, Ninewells Hospital & Medical School, Dundee

Raman spectroscopy has the potential to provide diagnostic information to the clinician. The technique has a number of advantages allowing individual cells to be interrogated without staining. With further developments in technology, the surgeon will be able to rapidly acquire accurate diagnostic information at the time of operation using fibre optic Raman probes. Improvements in signal detection and data analysis, like modulated Raman spectroscopy, will allow the rapid acquisition and analysis of spectra. There is also considerable potential in screening tissue fluids for cancer cells in order to facilitate early detection and for follow up after surgery for cancer. Collaborations between clinicians, pathologists and physicists are opening up new areas in this rapidly developing field. (more…)

Polymorph screening in pharmaceutical development

Issue 4 2010 / 19 August 2010 / Professor Alastair J. Florence, Solid-State Research Group, Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde

The majority of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are produced by crystallisation and so the phenomenon of polymorphism, whereby an organic molecule can adopt more than one crystalline form (Figure 1 ), is of considerable importance when trying to achieve consistent product quality during the manufacture of pharmaceutical solids and solid dosage forms. Although morphology and particle size-distribution are important solid-state characteristics, the uncontrolled occurrence of multiple physical forms (polymorphs, solvates, salts, co-crystals or amorphous) of an API can have significant effects on the performance of the material during processing, manufacture, storage and administration. For example, the solubility difference between some polymorphs has been shown to be over four times that of the least soluble form1 and can vary by significantly more for amorphous forms2. (more…)

A sensitive and selective vibrational spectroscopy technique in life sciences

Issue 6 2009, Past issues / 12 December 2009 /

At present, the relevance of Raman Spectroscopy (RS) as an analytical tool in pharmaceutical sciences is increasingly obvious. RS is a mode of vibrational spectroscopy based on inelastic scattering of laser light and, like infrared spectroscopy (IR), provides detailed molecular structure information (see Figure 1A). However, contrary to IR, it is applicable to aqueous samples and furthermore sample handling is minimal. It can thus provide information on compounds in their “natural” environment. To illustrate its applicability, RS can be used to study materials in situ, such as pharmaceutical tablets inside polymer containers₁. It is also applied as a process analyser or a process analytical tool₂. Because of its fast and non-invasive character, it is also very suitable for the fast identification of illicit or counterfeit drugs_3,4. (more…)

Raman spectroscopy in pharmaceutical analysis

Issue 5 2009, Past issues / 9 October 2009 /

A wide and versatile range of analytical techniques are routinely used, indeed are necessary, in pharmaceutical analysis. Over the past decade Raman spectroscopy has increasingly come to the fore as a valuable member of the arsenal of methods used, from both a fundamental and applied perspective, for the interrogation of solid, liquid and solution phase samples. Advances have occurred not only in instrumentation but also in fundamental techniques and applications. The method holds substantial potential for the investigation of, what are normally considered, problematic or challenging areas of analysis. The aforementioned areas include – but are, definitely not limited too reaction kinetics, pharmaceutical drug discovery, detection of counterfeit/adulterated/illegal drugs, trace analysis and uses for on-line pharmaceutical process manufacturing. This, the first of several articles on the use of Raman spectroscopic techniques in pharmaceutical analysis, provides an introductory overview of the theory of the technique. (more…)

Raman spectroscopic techniques for biotechnology and bioprocessing

Issue 1 2009, Past issues / 7 February 2009 /

Biotechnological expertise is becoming increasingly important within the pharmaceutical industry, and will play a pivotal role in the monitoring of fermentations, particularly their optimisation within the framework of Process Analytical Technologies (PAT). The ability to harness biological processes for the development of drug therapies, so called ‘biopharmaceuticals’ provides treatments that range from small molecule antibiotics to large recombinant proteins. Typically, synthesis of these drug products is enabled through the exploitation of bacterial, yeast, mammalian or plant cells. One of the earliest examples of protein biopharmaceuticals was the use of recombinant DNA technology to modify ‘Escherichia coli’ for the production of Human Insulin, which was followed by the development of Human Growth Hormone and Human Blood Clotting Factor₁.

More recently, liberalisation of the legislation controlling the development of stem cell technologies, allows for further opportunities in the development of biopharmaceuticals. In support of all these efforts, there is a pressing need to develop rapid and accurate methods for bioprocess monitoring, both for product yield optimisation and quality assurance purposes. Often these methods utilise analytical techniques, such as vibrational spectroscopy to obtain broad chemical profiles of the reaction or biotransformation in real-time, ultimately on-line. These data are ‘holistic’ in nature (since many functional groups are measured) and can be interpreted using multivariate pattern recognition methods in a variety of ways, and a common theme is the calibration of spectral data to product concentration, usually employing the partial least squares regression algorithm_2,3. Although these methodologies are well developed within the traditional chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the additional challenges of dealing with living processes have generated a great deal of interest in the evolution of PAT for biopharmaceuticals. (more…)

RS coupled to separations

Issue 2 2006, Past issues / 24 March 2006 / Cees Gooijer, Freek Ariese and Reyer J. Dijkstra, Dept. of Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, Laser Centre Vrije Universiteit

Currently, Raman spectroscopy (RS) is rapidly becoming a mature analytical technique in the pharmaceutical world. Thus far, it is used almost exclusively in a stand-alone mode, since coupling with liquid separation methods hardly seemed realistic in practice. However, as outlined in this article, recent developments are quite promising and such combinations of techniques have a distinct potential.

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Applications in bioprocesses and biotechnology

Issue 4 2005, Past issues / 11 November 2005 / Royston Goodacre and Roger M. Jarvis, School of Chemistry, The University of Manchester

Raman spectroscopy is a highly versatile tool that provides chemical fingerprints from biological material that can be interpreted using chemometrics and machine learning. In combination this powerful approach is being developed for the quantitative determination of multiple determinands in bioprocesses and for the characterisation of microorganisms.

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