Biomedical drug analysis developments

Rao RN, Nagaraju V. An overview of the recent trends in development of HPLC methods for determination of impurities in drugs. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis 33, 335-377, 2003. 

Since its inception about 15 year ago, MALDI-IMS has been developed into a powerful and versatile tool for biomedical research. It allows for the investigation of the spatial distribution of molecules at complex surfaces. The combination of molecular speciation with local analysis makes a chemical microscope that can be used for the direct biomolecular characterization of histological tissue section surface. However, successful detection of the analytes of interest at the desired spatial resolution requires careful attention to several steps in the IMS protocol matrix selection, matrix coating, data acquisition, and data processing. MALDI-IMS is increasingly playing an important role in the drug discovery and development and disease treatment. 

In addition to commercially production, a great deal of research and development work on biochips has been going on both in industry and in academia. Genomic analysis of DNA and RNA continues to be the focus of interest, but more and more effort is being spent on proteomic analysis of proteins and peptides. Several enzyme assays and immunoassays designed based on microarray-based systems with simple microfluidic control are close to commercialization. They can be a vital tool in clinic diagnostics, drug discovery, and biomedical research. 

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Within the last 25 years, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has developed as a high-resolution analytical technique that has been apphed to all analytical helds including chemical, pharmaceutical, biomedical, forensic, environmental analysis, and food sciences. Based on the number of publications, drugs are actually the preferred analytes in CE. While they served as model compounds for the investigation of specific aspects in some studies, CE has been used to solve real pharmaceutical problems in the majority of applications. 

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