Reports of substandard and counterfeit pharmaceuticals are on the rise, especially in developing countries. To address the problem of pharmaceutical quality monitoring at various stages of the supply chain, we demonstrate paper-based analytical devices for chemically screening pharmaceuticals in low-resource or field settings.  These devices for testing first line tuberculosis and beta-lactam drugs require only a cup of water to screen pharmaceuticals for both active ingredients and excipients.  The paper devices contain twelve lanes, separated by hydrophobic barriers, with different reagents or reagent precursors deposited in the lanes to allow multiplex testing.  The user deposits solid pharmaceutical onto the device and dips the edge of the paper into water.  The water, travelling by capillary action, triggers up to twelve different colorimetric chemical tests to form a �color bar code� indicating the pharmaceutical components present.  Sensitivity and selectivity for many of the analytes is high enough to pick out formulations containing no API or a substitute API, and formulations containing APIs that have been �cut� with inactive ingredients making these tools a user-friendly and inexpensive option for supplementary pharmaceutical screening.

Fast paper-based technology for qualitative pharmaceutical testing

246th National Meeting (2013)

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