Congratulations to Dr. Olatunde Awotunde!
Ola defended his PhD dissertation 29 March, 2024, and is now joining Abbvie Pharmaceuticals in Chicago, IL as a Research Scientist. Congratulations to Dr. Awotunde!
Project Updates
Fentanyl test strip quality monitoring program launched
Not all fentanyl test strips are the same, and the differences between different brands and even different batches of the same brand matter a lot when you're trying to detect lethal fentanyl levels in street drugs. Published 15 June 2024 in Harm Reduction Journal, the recent commentary, "An…
Fentanyl test strips have "blind spots" for detection of fentanyl analogs--Kat's paper is now published!
Fentanyl test strips are an important tool for detecting opioids that can cause fatal overdoses.
By testing over 200 fentanyl analogs with two brands of fentanyl test strips (FTS), Kathleen Hayes found that the test strips can detect many, but not all, fentanyl analogs. The types of analogs…
Global problems with chemotherapy drug quality require global solutions; we think PADs can play a role
Reporting from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism features the chemoPAD project; chemoPAD team members Dr. Paul Ndom, Prof. Marya Lieberman, and Prof. Ayenew Ashenef are quoted…
Congratulations to Dr. Kathleen Hayes!
June 22, 2023--After defending her dissertation, "Methods for Pharmaceutical and Illicit Drug Analysis," Kathleen Hayes is now a PhD and will move on to Abbvie as a medical writer. Good luck Kat, we will miss you!
…Congratulations to Naxos Neighbors and Marya Lieberman, winners of ND Lucy Institute's $51,000 Next Changemaker Prize
Joanne Cogdell, CEO of harm reduction organization Naxos Neighbors, and her collaborator Marya Lieberman, University of Notre Dame, were awarded the 2023 Next Changemaker Award from the Lucy Institute for Data and Society. The award of $51,000 will support our efforts to find emerging hazards in street…
Lieberman group attends first Scientific Meeting for ChemoPAD project in Ethiopia
The goal of the ChemoPAD project is to use paper analytical devices to screen the quality of chemotherapy drugs in sub-Saharan Africa. The team includes collaborators from seven institutions and five countries.
- US: University of Notre Dame and University of North Carolina,
- Ethiopia: …
Ola presents NIR project at NOBCChe
Olatunde Awosiji Awotunde presented a poster on "Combining orthogonal analytical techniques to identify substandard or falsified formulations of pharmaceuticals " at the 2023 NOBCChE meeting. Congratulations to Ola on representing Notre Dame at this national event!
Congratulations to Olatunde Awosiji Awotunde and Ornella Joseph, who have both passed their OCE exams!
Ola and Ornella were admitted as PhD candidates in May of 2023, congratulations!
Heather Whitehead and Kathleen Hayes published in Forensic Chemistry, part 2
Congratulations to Heather and Kat--their manuscript, "Development and validation of a liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for the analysis of 53 benzodiazepines in illicit drug samples," was just accepted by Forensic Chemistry! This manuscript follows the earlier method for analysis…
Congratulations to Dr. Heather Whitehead!
Heather Whitehead defended her PhD thesis March 30, 2023. Congratulations to Dr. Whitehead as she moves on to take EPA by storm as an ORISE EPA Fellow!
PAD project is highlighed in C&E News!
Interview in Chemical and Engineering News highlights our group's work to detect substandard and falsified pharmaceuticals. …
How does the Scott Test for cocaine work?
The Scott test has been used for over 50 years as a presumptive test for cocaine. It involves a series of reagent additions and color changes...and if it's not done and interpreted correctly, it can send innocent people to jail. This crystal structure now published in Acta Cryst E gives insight into what's going on in the test.
Bis(N,N-diethyl-4-methyl-4-piperazine-1-carboxamide) tetrakis(isothiocyanato-κN)cobalt(II), a model compound for the blue color developed in the Scott test. Oliver, A. G., Lockwood, T.-L. E., Zinna, J. & Lieberman, M. (2023). Acta Cryst. E79, 163-166
Heather Whitehead and Kathleen Hayes published in Forensic Chemistry
This paper shares a tandem mass spectroscopy method for quantitative analysis of 22 drugs and drug metabolites. The samples were harvested from used idPADs; we used this method, along with fentanyl and benzo test strips, to analyze 124 samples of illicit drugs collected from the Chicago area in 2021-2022. …
Kathleen Hayes and Marya Lieberman published in Nature Methods Reviews Primers
This commentary article, "Considerations for the design and implementation of point-of-care technology for use in low- and middle-income countries," uses the PAD project to reflect on why some technologies can be implemented in low-resource…
Kim Frederick's paper about teaching analytical method design with MICRO PADs is out!
A conversation with Marya Lieberman--ACS Central Science
Turkey Run 2022
Congratulations to Alyssa Wicks for passing her ARP!
Alyssa signed up for an early ARP time and passed with flying colors! Congratulations, Alyssa.
Congratulations to Olatunde Awosiji Awotunde, Nicholas Roseboom, and Jin Cai!
Discrimination of Substandard and Falsified Formulations from Genuine Pharmaceuticals Using NIR Spectra and Machine Learning
Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is a low-cost analytical tool for rapid characterization of pharmaceuticals. Usually, it's necessary to build up a "library" of NIR spectra…