Exploring Next-Generation Tools for Improved Analytical Efficiency in Pharmaceutical Development

Evolving drug modalities require the development of new analytical tools that are able to resolve the most difficult analytical challenges, be very high throughput/automated, and oftentimes be deployable for real-time analyses. In this presentation enabling technologies as well as future insights into in-silico supported analytical method development will be discussed. 1-2DLC can be used in a variety of pharmaceutical applications in which a single, traditional chromatographic run does not provide sufficient information about one or more analytes. To enhance this separation, diverse run conditions or orthogonal columns and/or chromatographic modes can be used in the 2nd dimension to isolate and reanalyze individual peaks in a single run. Several applications where 2DLC provides solutions to pharmaceutical related chromatographic challenges will be shared. Another need in today’s pharmaceutical development laboratories is the ability to obtain data rich information of a chemical process at near real-time speeds to fully understand a given process. Recent advancements have been made in automating high-throughput and unattended sample probing and preparation. However, one downside to the current platform capabilities is the footprint of the HPLC used in conjunction with the online setups. A compact HPLC which is approximately the size of a shoebox, allows for a HPLC to be placed in a hood rather than near it, which not only clears space in the lab, but allows for shorter sampling distances and improved analytical outputs. Lastly, advanced chromatographic modeling software allows for empirical models to be constructed and provides an ability to predict optimized separations. Most recently, there has been an increase in the number of reported and accessible ML/AI models which can potentially predict retention times of known (or proposed) structures in-silico. Herein, we discuss initial attempts to apply these models to real-life small-molecule drug separations.