Metabolic and Toxicology studies look at the passage of a drug or chemical into and through the body.  They range from routine safety screening for workers potentially at risk to chemicals through to pharmaceutical drug safety testing and drug prescription compliance and monitoring in the clinical environment.  Genevac systems provide an invaluable tool to researchers in these environments, providing fast, safe evaporative sample preparation free from artefact, contamination and sample loss.

Applications range from the relatively simple concentration or drying of solvent extracts from tissue samples to qualitatively analyse for the presence of a drug.  Two studies using a miVac concentrator focus on this work:

• Better Analysis of Insulin Analogues - Dr Catrin Goebel, Australian Sports Drug Testing Lab
• Detection of Diclofenac Residues in Wildlife - Dr Ngaio Richards, Anglia Ruskin University

More complex metabolic studies utilise labelled drug molecules which are fed to subjects.  Samples are taken, extracted and separated via HPLC.  Multiple samples are often collected in scintillant containing microtitre plates, such as the LumaPlate.  These must be carefully dried before analysis via a luminescence reader such as a TopCount.  If the plates are crudely dried the labelled molecule does not come into intimate contact with the scintillant providing a false reading.  The Genevac EZ-2 and DD-4X have been shown to be excellent for this purpose.

• Increasing Metabolite Recoveries in ADMET Studies - Dr Sophie Mcdougall, Sanofi Aventis
  Studies showed that by using a Genevac HT-4 evaporator and Luma plates can increase the sensitivity and hence the recoveries as the extra gravitational force applied helps the sample mixture to dry as a tight pellet at the bottom of the well.
• Automation without Robotics - Peter Bennett, Drug Metabolism group at Servier Research
  Evaluation of SampleGenie™ in their laboratory
• Advances in Sample-prep for Metabolite Profiling - Dr Flavio Cinato, Nerviano MS
  Trials with EZ-2 showed that the optimal balance between speed and minimal compound degradation.
• Improving Productivity in Toxicology Screening - Rob Darrington, Genevac
  Using a modern centrifugal evaporator like Genevac EZ-2 provides automation, user safety, reliability of the analysis and productivity
    

• The use of 96-well Scintiplates to facilitate definitive metabolism studies for drug candidates
  Nedderman et al. published in J. Pharm Biomed Anal 34, Issue 3, 2004, pp607-617 
• In Vitro Metabolism and Covalent Binding of Enol-Carboxamide Derivatives and Anti-Inflammatory Agents Sudoxicam and Meloxicam: Insights into the Hepatotoxicity of Sudoxicam
  Obach et al. published in Chem. Res. Toxicol., 2008, 21 (9), pp 1890–1899
• Glycerolysis of Acyl Glucuronides as an Artifact of in Vitro Drug Metabolism Incubations
  R. Scott Obach published in Drug Metab Dispos August 2009 vol. 37 no. 8 1581-1586
• Pharmacokinetics in Animals and Humans of a First-in-Class Peptide Deformylase Inhibitor
  Ramanathan-Girish et al. published in Antimicrob Agents Chemother, December 2004, vol. 48 No. 12 pp 4835-4842

• A High-Throughput Screening Method to Identify Small Molecule Inhibitors of Thyroid Hormone Receptor Coactivator Binding

  Arnold et al. published in Sci. STKE, June 2006 Vol. 2006, Issue 341, p. pl3