Dr. Steven Stodghill, in the College of Pharmacy’s Department of Pharmaceutical, Social & Administrative Sciences, has had a paper accepted in Drug Development and Industrial Pharmacy titled Physico-chemical characterization of a novel anti-cancer agent and its comparison to Taxol®.

Stodghill and his collaborators evaluated a model compound, JCA112, which has a very good tubulin binding ability, similar to Taxol. In earlier studies the compound did not perform well in traditional in vitro studies used to screen a New Chemical Entity.  This investigation characterized the physicochemical properties of the compound including, solubility, stability, polymorphism, lipophilicity, complexation ability and permeability, leading to identification of several incompatibilities with standard in vitro screening procedures.  This suggests that a thorough understanding of the pre-formulation characteristics of the drug substance is vital in understanding the potential outcome of the in vitro screening studies.