Dr. Michael Hicks, pleasecontactAssociate PrincipleScientist, Merck

Title: Attaining sustainability with challenging separations in pharmaceutical methods development 

Abstract:

Pharmaceutical development currently relies on quality separation methods from early discovery through to line-of-site to manufacturing. There have been marketable and consistent innovations made regarding the column particle packing, ID, length, and connectivity, with more understanding of key parameters like void volume, flow rate, and temperature. All these parameters affect the resultant separation quality i.e., resolution, peak shape, peak width, run time, and signal to noise. There is however a strong need to consider method sustainability when developing reliable separation methods. The current shift toward UHPLC, the wider use of supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) and a growing interest in miniaturization all reflect current trends toward chromatographic sustainability. Progress with methods applying the best method choices will consider newer instrument designs and newer column technologies over traditional, widely accepted separation methods. This presentation will discuss how chromatographers can develop a greater awareness of sustainable separation development using metrics like the analytical method greenness score (AMGS) for strategic advantages of making methods more efficient and more sustainable.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Michael Hicks has over 25 years of pharmaceutical research experience. He is currently Associate Principal Scientist in the Analytical R&D Department at Merck Research Labs in Rahway NJ. He specializes in separations, particularly for supercritical fluid chromatography as well as both small and large molecule separation and detection methods. He has 51 co- authored publications, over 1900 citations, 17 first author and is recently co-author of the text “Practical Applications of SFC for Pharmaceutical Research & Development” with Dr. Paul Ferguson (AstraZeneca).