The Laboratory Robotics Interest Group
Mid Atlantic Chapter
October 2004 Meeting
Dual Track Meeting!
Solid Dosage Form / Information Technologies
Date: Thursday, October 14,
2004
Place: Somerset Marriott Hotel, 110 Davidson Ave., Somerset, NJ 08873
Phone: 732-560-0500, Fax: 732-560-3669
Itinerary: Exhibition & Social Period - 3:00 to 6:30 PM
Meeting & Presentations - 6:30 to
9:00 PM
Registration: REQUESTED, not required. Registering will
allow us to more accurately gauge seating requirements and refreshment
needs. Register
on the web at
http://lab-robotics.org/member/meetings.asp?rid=1. There will be
drawings from the web registrants for LRIG
laser pointers, photon keyring lights and any other donated prizes.
Door Prizes:
Laser Pointers (LRIG)
Photon Keyring Lights (LRIG)
Door prizes for the drawings gratefully accepted - a great way to get your
name out!

Agenda:
This meeting features separate tracks. One meeting room will host
presentations on
Pharmaceutical Solid Dosage Form applications and the other will host Information
Technologies.
Attend this meeting to hear discussions on new laboratory automation
tools and technologies in these important areas. The exhibition will
showcase automation providers offering the latest in technologies for SDF and
Informatics. Come early for the exhibition and join the
community in the social period.
Food and refreshments will be available FREE OF CHARGE during the
Exhibition and Social Period.
There is always a Job posting board at the social. Please encourage your recruiters to
give you material to post and distribute. Openings may also be posted at
http://lab-robotics.org/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=2.
There is no fee to attend the meeting.

Presentation (Solid Dosage Form Track):
Challenging the Limits of Automating Drug Product Assay Methods: A Case Study in
TPW Methods for Extended Release Formulations
Carol Moynihan, Senior Researcher
P & G Pharmaceuticals
Applying automation to the support of pharmaceutical product testing has obvious
advantages. However, “Doing more with less” requires significant up-front
thought if the advantages of the automated technology are to be used to their
fullest extent. Automated technology offers enhanced of flexibility not
available using more traditional techniques for sample preparation. This
flexibility can be leveraged to both facilitate the management of even complex
pharmaceutical applications while simplifying the sample analysis. A case study
will be presented on effective management of challenging applications such as
extended release formulations using a Caliper LS TPWII.

Presentation (Solid Dosage Form Track):
Application of Ion Mobility Spectrometry to Cleaning Verification
Elizabeth Galella, So Chi Fung, Scott Jennings
Bristol-Myers Squibb Analytical Research and Development/PRI, New Brunswick NJ
Ion Mobility Spectrometry (IMS) has been used for many years as a device for
detection of narcotics in airports. More recently, its applications have been
expanded to include the quick and efficient analysis of samples to verify
pharmaceutical equipment and surface cleanliness.
IMS is similar to Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry. The ions are generated by
atmospheric pressure chemical ionization. Sample material is swept into a small
drift chamber where Ni63, a beta radiation source, ionizes the molecules. The
resulting ions are separated by mass and charge as they are accelerated towards
the detector. The sensitivity of IMS will vary according to molecular
configuration and functionality, but detection is usually in the high picogram
to low nanogram level. The advantage of IMS over traditional HPLC analysis for
cleaning verification, is that it requires minimal sample preparation and
analysis times are in seconds.

Presentation (Solid Dosage Form Track):
Customer Sponsored Automation Development for Tablet Processing
Lynn Jordan, Applications Laboratory Manager
Caliper Life Science
Caliper Life Science’s (formerly Zymark) TPWII has been an industry standard for
solid dosage form assay and content uniformity analysis. There is an active
project to modernize the TPW control architecture to provide improved
throughput, method flexibility, reliability and supportability. This is a
customer funded project with considerable customer input in the design process
and testing phases. This presentation provides and overview of the project.

Presentation (Solid Dosage Form Track):
UV Fiber Optics: A New Approach for Dissolution Automation
Xujin Lu
Bristol-Myers Squibb Analytical Research and Development/PRI, New Brunswick NJ
Traditional dissolution testing is a labor-intensive process, which requires
manually withdrawing sample aliquots from vessels, filtering the samples and
transferring the solutions into cells or vials for analysis. Great efforts were
made to automate this process for improved productivity, and many
accomplishments have been achieved using automated liquid samplers and
laboratory robotics. UV fiber optics is a cutting edge technique, which provides
a new approach for dissolution automation.
Instead of focusing on sample removal as was the case in previous automation
efforts, fiber optics monitors UV spectra of the dissolved drug in situ. Fiber
optic dissolution systems are simple and easy to use, which requires less
maintenance and simple system suitability testing. Examples will be presented
for dissolution testing of a variety of solid dosage forms. Prospects and
limitations for fully automated UV fiber optic dissolution system will be
discussed.

Presentation (Information Technologies Track):
United Devices - The Grid Driven Enterprise
Ed Hubbard , President and Founder
United
Devices
During this interactive session, President and Founder Ed Hubbard will outline
United Devices' vision of the Grid Driven Enterprise. Through industry examples
from leading pharma companies around the world to the work United Devices has
completed on its public grid, you will learn about the power and impact of Grid
computing, how it is changing the drug discovery process, and how it is
reshaping clinical research.

Presentation (Information Technologies Track):
Software Systems for Drug-Discovery
Joe Shambaugh, Sr. Bioinformatics Specialist
Genedata
Screening operations systematically explore the space of drug-like molecules,
measuring their activity on a variety of biological targets in standardized and
well-controlled experiments, and providing a wealth of data which has so far
rarely been fully exploited.
At Genedata, we are developing sophisticated methods and software for the
suitable organziation and standardization of screening data and its highly
automated analysis. Our large-scale automated quality assurance process
increases the reproducibility of screening results from both single-dose and
dose-response-curve experiments. It paves the way for an in-depth analysis of
the relationships between compound structures and their effects on biological
targets. Context-driven data organization facilitates the efficient use of the
resulting knowledge base by allowing the researcher to easily interrogate and
interpret the high-quality screening data in corporate databases to answer
specific scientific questions.

Presentation (Information Technologies Track):
The Role of LIMS/Robotics in the Graduate Level Laboratory Informatics Program
Mahesh Merchant, Ph.D
School of Automatics, Indiana University
The School of Informatics at Indiana University has introduced a Master’s level
graduate program in Laboratory Informatics. This program gives the students an
opportunity to work with Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS),
Zymark robot controlled by LabView, Enterprise Content Management System,
Chromatography System, Electronic Laboratory Notebook and Data Visualization
Software. Implementation and integration details of the software packages and
student projects will be presented.

Presentation (Information Technologies Track):
Microsoft.Net - Strategy and Roadmap
Dan Kasun, Architect/Developer
Evangelist on the Microsoft National Architecture Team
Microsoft Corporation, Healthcare and Life Sciences
This discussion will provide an overview of Microsoft .NET - what it is, and how
it applies to all types of application development from server-side processing
to PDAs and embedded systems. We will also discuss how .NET is being leveraged
in the industry, and the benefits that developers are realizing from the
platform. Finally, we will outline Microsoft's roadmap for .NET and for
application development, including the next version of Visual Studio (VS 2005,
aka: Whidbey), our strategy for Office development, and the long term strategy
with Longhorn.

Exhibitors:
Interested in exhibiting? Please contact Kevin Olsen,
olsenkbce@juno.com,
973-655-4076.
Exhibitor Payment:
Multiple table spaces may
be purchased. The table fee for this exhibition is $500. The check should be made payable
to:
The Laboratory Robotics Interest Group
and sent to our treasurer:
Zhengming (Jimmy) Chen, Ph. D.
Dov Pharmaceutical, Inc.
433 Hackensack Avenue
Hackensack, NJ 07601
tel: (201) 336-3150
fax: (201) 968-0986
email: zchen@dovpharm.com
Alternatively, the money may be wired directly to our bank account.
For details, contact Jimmy Chen.
Our Federal Tax ID Number (TIN) is 26-6033993.
__________________________________________________
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