MICROBIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS AND PHYSICAL-CHEMICAL ANALYSIS: AN INTELLIGENT AND ESSENTIAL ASSOCIATION

Ana Kogawa, UNESP, Araraquara, Brasil (ac_kogawa@yahoo.com.br)

Quality control is the sector of the pharmaceutical industry responsible for evaluating the quality of pharmaceuticals and medicines. It is responsible for releasing or not the pharmaceutical products onto the market. For this it uses both physical-chemical and microbiological methods of analysis. Therefore, these methods must be highly reliable and represent the real quality of the medicine that will reach the patient.

On the one hand, the most widely used analytical method in pharmaceutical industries for evaluating pharmaceutical products is high performance liquid chromatography. It is an excellent physical-chemical analysis tool. On the other hand, the agar diffusion method is the most well-known microbiological method used in pharmaceutical industries for the evaluation of antimicrobial potency.

When it comes to antimicrobials, the association of physical-chemical methods and microbiological methods is fundamental. While the microbiological analysis evaluates the molecule as a whole, the physical-chemical analysis cannot always detect the real potency of the antimicrobial, because the part of the molecule responsible for the activity is not always its target. A routine analysis of quality control by high performance liquid chromatography is relatively rapid, taking about 15 minutes. The same analysis by agar diffusion lasts 24 hours.

There is an extremely viable, fast and economical alternative for the microbiological analysis called turbidimetric method. It lasts only 4 hours, uses liquid culture medium, uses less volume of material, requires fewer steps in preparation and the results are provided by a spectrophotometer. All these characteristics give the turbidimetric method advantages over the agar diffusion method.

Antimicrobial analysis should not be limited to the physical-chemical results, since the consequences of using products without adequate quality contribute to bacterial resistance, proliferation of superbugs and overload of the health system. The proposal for the evaluation of antimicrobials is to associate the physical-chemical methods, consecrated in the pharmaceutical analyzes, with the turbidimetric method, which comes as a smart reality for the current needs of laboratories and chemical-pharmaceutical industries.

Abstract Reference & Short Personal Biography of Presenting Author

My name is Ana Carolina Kogawa, I am Pharmaceutical-Biochemistry by UNESP and Master and PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences also by UNESP. I have Black Belt-Six Sigma Training, which helped me enormously in performing activities, planning experiments, problem solving, and teamwork. Currently, I carry out post-doctoral research at UNESP in the areas of Pharmaceutical Technology and Physico-chemical and Microbiological Quality Control of Drugs and Medicines.
So far, I have 60 scientific articles published. During my Master, PhD and post-doctoral studies I participated in national and international events through presentation of poster and oral papers in London (UK), Osaka (Japan), Valencia (Spain), Rome (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal), Berlin (Germany), Paris (France), Ghent and Liege (Belgium), Cordoba and Rosario (Argentina), Cartagena de las Indias (Colombia) and several cities in Brazil. I am a reviewer of 22 international journals, which are described in the curriculum. I co-supervised and co-supervise undergraduate, master and doctoral students. My index h = 9 and Index i10 = 9.
My area of activity is the physico-chemical and microbiological quality control of drugs and medicines aimed at green analytical chemistry and everything that involves it. Our concern for quality is multidimensional. It covers the health of the analyst, the chosen reagents, the treatment of residues, the amount of residues formed, the toxicity of the reagents, the accessories used, the analysis time, the chosen technique, the equipment of protection, physical and emotional well-being, the environment and, of course, safe and effective pharmaceutical analyzes.

My projects also aim to work in a multidisciplinary way interacting in different laboratories: Quality Control and Pharmaceutical Technology; different equipment: spectrophotometer, chromatograph, dissolutor, X-ray diffractor; different methods: wet milling, complexation, spectrophotometry in the ultraviolet, visible and infrared regions, high performance liquid chromatography, microbiological turbidimetry, dissolution; and different people. I believe that this interaction is rich and my goal is always to strengthen the group with the teachings brought and lived in other laboratories with other ways of working, I believe that networking nowadays is differential and can bring great opportunities. In this way, we improve ourselves, become integrated people and contribute to world literature and benefit the community, the population, since we think in a multidimensional way focusing on the whole, the parts and, above all, the interaction between the parts of a system.