(746c) Water Proton NMR for Noninvasive Chemical and Pharmaceutical Analysis

Water is by far the dominant component of a pharmaceutical solution. As the solvent, water has extensive interactions with the drug and the excipients. Hence abnormalities of a drug product could be reflected in the water proton NMR signal. This forms the basis of using the ¹H₂O signal for noninvasive analysis of pharmaceutical solutions with desktop NMR spectrometers. Examples of using the ¹H₂O signal to quantify protein concentration, protein aggregation, surfactant micellization, dendrimer folding and nanoparticle formulation will be presented. The unique advantage of a water NMR analytical technique is the ability to inspect a sealed drug product without any tampering. This opens the door for quantitative inspection of every vial of a pharmaceutical solution in its entire lifecycle, from the point-of-release to the point-of-care.