Antibiotics Analysis Information

E.g., aminoglycosides, macrolides, some tetracylines, lipopeptides and glycopeptides

Streptomycin was the first aminoglycoside antibiotic discovered and used in clinical therapy. These antibiotics are now widely used as clinical and veterinary medicines to treat bacterial infections because of their protein synthesis inhibition capability, leading to cell death. However, these antibiotics can have serious side effects and cause varying degrees of toxicity. It is important to develop sensitive and reliable analytical methods to characterize and quantify drug purity and detect minor degradants or impurities. Based on the nature of their production (fermentation), there are often mixtures of related components (congeners, isomers) and fractions which must be monitored and controlled.

As well as being structurally-related, many aminoglycoside antibiotics are actually synthesised from one another. For example, sisomicin is a broad spectrum aminoglycoside isolated from the fermentation broth of Micromonospora. Netilmicin is a semi-synthetic aminoglycoside antibiotic prepared from sisomicin. Both sisomicin and netilmicin are mainly used in the treatment of severe infections, particularly those resistant to gentamicin. Etimicin is semi-synthesized from gentamicin C_1a, and so on.

Analysis of aminoglycosides and their related impurities is often achieved by ion-pairing reversed-phase (RP) high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), based on their hydrophilic and positively charged nature. However, due to the lack of a suitable chromophore, aminoglycosides cannot be detected by ultraviolet (UV). Corona charged aerosol detectors (CAD), evaporative light scattering detectors (ELSD), mass spectrometers (MS), and electrochemical detectors are generally used to detect these compounds without prior derivatization.

The USP monographs for some aminoglycoside drug substances (and drug products made from them) often involve high pressure anion exchange (HPAE) ion chromatography (IC) assays with integrated pulsed amperometric detection (IPAD).

E.g., sulphonamides, quinolones, oxazolidinones

Chemically synthesised antibiotics often involve a number of intermediate compounds in their preparation, and these may remain as impurities in the final product. Chemical antibiotics are usually assayed by HPLC with UV detection, but where a chromophore is absent in either the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) or impurities, IC with suppressed conductivity detection is considered the best alternative for selective determination.

E.g., beta-lactams (penicillins, cephalosporins, penems, carbapenems, and monobactams), some tetracylines and glycopeptides

Semi-synthetic antibiotics generally have fewer impurities than their biological counterparts. Impurities may include fermented starting material with related impurities, synthesis by-products, synthesis intermediates, and degradation products.

Beta-lactam antibiotics are a class of broad-spectrum antibiotics, consisting of all antibiotic agents that contain a beta-lactam ring in their molecular structures. These antibiotics function through the inhibition of bacterial cell wall synthesis. Following extensive use, some bacterial populations have shown ability to develop resistance to beta-lactams and become more virulent.

Often beta-lactamase inhibitors, such as clavulanate (clauvulanic acid) and sulbactam are co-formulated with beta-lactam antibiotics to increase their effectiveness through the counteraction of bacterial resistance. Impurities associated with the inhibitor as well as the antibiotic therefore need to be controlled and monitored.

Antibiotics are heavily used in the production of biopharmaceuticals. Mammalian cell lines that express biotherapeutic proteins, such as antibodies, must be maintained over several weeks. They are fed with culture media supplemented with various vitamins, growth factors, and antibiotics to avoid contamination and growth failure. Testing of residual antibiotics in the product is required to ensure patient safety.