Hospital analysers: the latest weapon against fake drugs

A new study shows that hospital analysers can be used to identify fake liquid medical products, including vaccines and insulin. Dr Hamid Merchant from the University of East London (UEL) is a member of the research team behind this advance, led by the University of Oxford.

The team has demonstrated for the first time that standard hospital analysers can accurately distinguish genuine liquid medical products from fakes. This provides a low-cost screening tool to complement established methods for samples requiring more specialist analysis.

The breakthrough addresses a global health threat, which sees - as per World Health Organisation estimates - 10.5% of medicines worldwide in low- and middle-income countries to be substandard or fake, leading to ineffective disease management and exposure to harmful ingredients.

Dr Hamid Merchant, Head of the Department of Bioscience at UEL, said:

Ensuring the integrity of medicines and vaccines is fundamental to global public health. This study shows how tools already present in hospitals can be rapidly mobilised to protect patients by flagging potentially dangerous falsified products early.  Due to the wide-reaching availability of these instruments across hospitals around the world, it offers an accessible screening tool to intercept the likes of counterfeit vaccines and liquid medicines, before they harm patients.”

VIE project leader, Professor Paul Newton of the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, University of Oxford, said: 

There is a great need for accessible and inexpensive techniques for screening for falsified vaccines and liquid medicines – this novel approach of repurposing existing widely available hospital analysers holds promise for detecting these before they reach patients so that timely and appropriate action can be taken.”

The Vaccine Identify Evaluation (VIE) Collaboration includes representatives from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, Department of Biochemistry, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, Pandemic Sciences Institute and Department of Chemistry; the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; STFC, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI); the University of East London; the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva; the Serum Institute of India; and Agilent Technologies.

The paper is published in Nature’s Scientific Reports.