Solid-state NMR Spectroscopy in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Drug Delivery to Formulation Development
The success of modern medications for the purpose of benefiting patients is a product of the best practice of interdisciplinary sciences and technologies. Structural details often provide the molecular mechanism to construct the interplay among biology, chemistry and engineering. Solid-state NMR spectroscopy (ssNMR) analyzes a wide range of insoluble pharmaceutical materials from small molecule medicines to biological products in a non-invasive and quantitative manner. The obtained structural information at macroscopic and microscopic scales offer critical knowledge for understanding and optimizing drug delivery, chemical and physical stability, bioavailability, formulation composition, and manufacturing process. This presentation will overview the versatile roles of ssNMR in pharmaceutical development for providing the structural basis for the design of drug substances and products. Advanced techniques including proton detection under ultrafast magic angle spinning (UF-MAS) and dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) for overcoming low sensitivity challenges of natural abundance crystalline compounds, amorphous drug substance and solid dosages will be discussed. A variety of studies from small molecules to biopharmaceutics will be included as examples to introduce the molecular structure mediated questions in pharmaceutical sciences and elaborate how ssNMR techniques are employed to tackle these analytical challenges.
Speaker
Yongchao Su, Ph.D
Pharmaceutical Sciences & Clinical Supply, Merck Research Laboratories
Dr. Su is an Associate Principal Scientist and the lead of the NMR lab in Pharmaceutical Sciences & Clinical Supply at Merck & Co. Dr. Su has received postdoctoral training with Prof. Robert G. Griffin at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after his Ph.D. at Iowa State University with Prof. Mei Hong. His research covers characterizations of small molecule and peptide drugs in formulation development, and mechanistic investigations of pharmaceutically interesting biomacromolecules including membrane-active pharmaceuticals, membrane ion channels and pathological amyloid fibrils. His most recent work focus on elucidating molecular structures and interactions of stability-related events in solid dosages by utilizing advanced solid-state NMR techniques including Dynamic Nuclear Polarization and proton detection under ultra-fast spinning. He currently serves in the Advisory Board for Magnetic Resonance in Chemistry with Wiley and as an Editor of Amino Acids with Springer. He has worked as Chair to organize NMR sessions in many scientific conferences. In the past few years, Dr. Su has contributed nearly 50 publications in peer-reviewed journals and has been frequently invited to give talks and seminars at scientific conferences and universities.