title: Assessment of hand-held Raman instrumentation for in situ screening for potentially counterfeit artesunate antimalarial tablets by FT-Raman spectroscopy and direct ionization mass spectrometry.
abstract: Pharmaceutical counterfeiting has become a significant public health problem worldwide and new, rapid, user-friendly, reliable and inexpensive methods for drug quality screening are needed. This work illustrates the chemical characterization of genuine and fake artesunate antimalarial tablets by portable Raman spectroscopy and validation by FT-Raman spectroscopy and ambient mass spectrometry. The applicability of a compact and robust portable Raman spectrometer (TruScan) for the in situ chemical identification of counterfeit tablets is reported.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.
authors.forename: Camilla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ricci
authors.forename: Leonard
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nyadong
authors.forename: Felicia
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Facundo M
authors.initials: FM
authors.lastname: Fernandez
authors.forename: Christopher D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Paul N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Newton
authors.forename: Sergei G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Kazarian
mesh_terms: D000962:Antimalarials / Q000032:analysis*; D037621:Artemisinins / Q000032:analysis*; D000077332:Artesunate; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D005607:Fraud; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000379:methods*; D011786:Quality Control; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013059:Spectrum Analysis, Raman / Q000295:instrumentation*; D013607:Tablets
chemical_list: D000962:Antimalarials; D037621:Artemisinins; D013607:Tablets; D000077332:Artesunate